Musibau Taiwo Kolawole is a former member of the House of Representatives from Ajeromi/Ifelodun Constituency in Lagos State and a former deputy speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly. In this exclusive interview with INIOBONG IWOK, he spoke on the state of the nation and the 25 years of democracy in Nigeria. Excerpt:
Many Nigerians say there is little to celebrate in 25 years of democracy. What is your take?
Anybody can say anything they like; one of the gains of democracy is freedom of expression that is why they are happy to say what they are saying. If we are under a military regime some of those people would be locked up today. The military does not accept criticism; we fought for democracy and got this freedom of speech that is why where we are. Most especially, when you are free, you forget where you are coming from and the past.
How do you react to the criticism that has trailed the conduct of our elections?
I am not bothered by what anybody is saying. Those saying that the current system does not allow the right people to emerge don’t know what they are saying. There is no democracy that would not allow you to go and meet the people, campaign and win elections.
I know a lot of people are talking about the parliamentary system; you need to ask them; do you know why we left the parliamentary system?
I know it is less expensive, but even with that if you don’t have the spread it would still result in futility.
Some people say they won the election, but they were rigged out, but you can’t be everywhere during election day, you can only be in your polling unit and it is what happens there that you can say hundred percent.
I know it is in the Eastern states that we had the worst election in 2023, but nobody wants to say it. In the past, you could mention four or five states in Northern Nigeria where you would get millions of votes, but it can’t happen anymore. Even though the American election is contentious, the question is; is the irregularities enough to cancel the whole results. Nobody can have a hundred per cent election that is free, but when you have a substantial number of it you can say yes.
I was a member of the committee in the House of Representative that gave INEC the powers to employ new innovations to improve our elections and I would always be very happy to be part of it.
We even introduced laws that would remove us from the primaries, without knowing because you can only make laws you can’t interpret.
I think we have achieved freedom of expression in the last twenty-five years of democracy.
One of the things I always say is that, if you don’t know where we are coming from you would not appreciate where we are and that there is a lot of progress.
It would be shocking to you, that when we got to government in 1999, we brainstormed on how to tackle the problem of waste in the streets of Lagos.
The state was so dirty, and we called on the then governor Bola Tinubu to see what we could do.
Bold strategies were put in place and there was a solution. If you come from a place in Ajegunle called Ashapo; we had four stories of refuge, which was scary.
Yes, that was how bad it was, but if you went there today you would not know the place. It is a different place now that is turned around. If you tell the people leaving there now this story they would not believe.
If a government can solve all the problems in the government there would be no need for an election to change government. The previous administrations neglected infrastructure that is why we are seeing kidnapping today.
Presently, somebody can use just cutlass to hijack a 25-seater bus, you can see that the government is glaring up in the areas of infrastructure and building roads.
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That is probably why many people are agitating for restructuring of the country. Does this not appeal to you?
What is restructuring? It is what we are preaching, Devolution of powers to the state. What they are talking about is not restructuring.
You heard what Olu Falae said recently; we should go back to the regional government, that would destroy all the structures we have on the ground since independence.
Why did we leave the regional government? Why did we leave the parliamentary system? We left because the insecurity of the parliamentary system is too high.
For instance, in Yoruba land, our traditional leaders were powerful more like next to God, and they had judiciary and legislative powers and some people wanted a system at the federal level like that.
But the parliamentary system brought so much conflict between the prime minister and the opposition leader. With the present Nigeria Imagine if we are still running that.
In the UK, the king is merely there ceremoniously and doesn’t have power, although they have the House of Common, but that is their system.
Our own here we are used to having the head that is powerful, that is why we need to have a system that would push the head to be a bit powerful, and that is what we have now.
We have governors that are higher than anybody in the states, a semblance of what we had before in our traditional system.
But what we need is devolution of powers to the states, the centre is too powerful.
Some people are calling for the scrapping of the state electoral commission, the American system that we are operating to give room for state electoral commission.
The state electoral body conducts their elections and, in that place, people don’t even wait for the results to be announced; when they know they have lost they call the press and call their opponent to congratulate them.
People are calling for the state electoral commission to be scrapped because they are controlled by the governors?
That is the developmental stage of democracy; there would be a time where there would be change.
The people that have powers to make law in the House of Assembly are from one political party if you take the case from Lagos State; meaning that everything from the governor would be passed, but when the House of Assembly is divided with opposition members such would not happen.
Democracy is still the best form of government, there is no alternative now.
If we don’t think of where we are coming from and change this system to something that does not suit the present time, it could result in high insecurity that would consume the country.
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How do you react to agitations for a new constitution?
Don’t mind them, even in America they rely on amendments. America had the first and second amendment.
They did not say they want to rewrite the constitution, because they know when you rewrite the constitution you want to create problems because everybody would want to add their own interest and it takes a longer period.
So, when somebody has that political will to do what we have, what we should be saying is; how do we improve on this?
For instance, if somebody says we should go back to the system we are practicing in the first republic, why would anybody say that?
This was a system we left because of insecurity, the insecurity we are seeing now is small when you talk of political power insecurity it would destroy the whole nation.
But what we have is more of a unitary system and the president is too powerful. You don’t agree that there should be a change?
That is the true federalism we are talking about that they must dissolve power to the states.
You know when the military seized power; they wanted the power to be around them; you don’t blame them.
Take for instance, the Value Added Tax is a state tax, but when the military came, they said let us centralise it for easy collection and at the end of it they centralised what would be for the state.
Even states that don’t want people to drink alcohol in their domain, shares from the money accruing from tax in this sector in other states.
State police are part of the devolution of powers we are talking about.
Let us look at what let us leave the parliamentary system, for example, Awolowo was jailed and he would have remained in prison for long if not for the changed government.
He was the opposition leader and the ruling party leader was not comfortable seeing him criticise his government.
We must not remove our background from what we are doing, because it would affect us, but people forget easily until we commit the same error.
Parliamentary system failed in Nigeria, before the military struck in 1966. Part of the reason for the military taking over was because the system had collapsed. A lot of the opposition leaders then were arrested and given life imprisonment.
What we need to do is to correct the system that we have now, no system is perfect.
Imagine if what happened in Britain had happened here; I mean changing of prime minister frequently, there may be serious conflict in the country.
I don’t trust that our politicians would be bold enough to take it maturely. Nigeria is mature with the presidential system, it suits us.
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