Ahead of his 70th birthday anniversary on January 4, 2012, former Director-General of Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, former Minister of External Affairs and Professor of Political Science, Bolaji Akinwande Akinyemi, in this interview, speaks on the experience of growing up during his early days and the loss of cherished values in Nigeria of today. The international diplomat also discusses Nigeria's national questions and calls for an unrestricted national conference. To him, at 70, he is fulfilled but not happy because of the pathetic situation of things in Nigeria.Excerpts:Happy birthday sir! You seem radiant at 70. What is the secret'The grace of God and I am not saying that in the usual Nigerian flippant way of speaking. Obviously, I inherited the genes from my parents. But the genes are a gift from God'that at the age of 70 I don't dye my air. And yet, 99 per cent of that is black, though I can see a few strands of grey air. It is just the gift of God. You don't make yourself; even your parents don't make you. If your parents were responsible for your transmission, they can't even decide whether you are going to be a boy or a girl, short or tall. They can't decide the colour of your skin. All they decide is the name they then give you. I give the glory to God.The second reason is the style of life that I have lived, in the sense that I am not a party person. You don't find me going from party to party every weekend. Sometimes, I may not leave this house at all in three weeks, except to go from my bedroom to my study or my Library and then to church on Sunday. It is not that I deliberately stay away from parties. I just don't like parties. I am not a night person. Again, it goes back also to how one is created. There are people who love going out at nights and sleep during the day. There are people who can get by with three or four hours of sleep. Believe me, I must get my seven to eight hours of sleep even at this age. I suppose when you put all these things together, they are responsible for the way I look at 70.What about what you eat'That also is there. I love vegetables, whether it is made in the African way into efo riro (cooked vegetable) or it is the English way (salads). I love all kinds of salads ' Lebanese salads and others. I love very fresh things. I am a fruit person, which is all I eat in the morning ' banana, pawpaw. I used to like pineapple until my dentist said that it is too acidic for my teeth. So I have to cut that out. But in the morning I eat a lot of fruits. I also drink a lot of coffee. Which people say is not good for you but I love coffee. Then I eat a lot of meat. Again, that is a family thing ' my brother and sisters ' we all have a taste for meat.Yet, the doctor would say eat more fish at your age. Well, I just think I got to have some weaknesses. I eat a lot of meat. That then goes back to what I said' that it is really the gift of God. There are people by the time they are 50, the doctor will tell them: 'don't go near red meat again. Eat only white meat,' like chicken and all that. But, I eat all of these things that I am not supposed to eat at my age. But, then they don't seem to affect me adversely.I do exercise but not strenuously. I just fast-walk around my garden and do a bit of yoga ' that is all.What was it like growing up in Nigeria of your early days'Growing up both in this country and abroad, when I look back now, it was a lot less stressful than it is these days. It was full of hope. I mean I grew up during the time of agitation for independence; I grew up at the time we hero-worshipped our leaders because they were men of substance, they were men who had that vision ' a vision we could share. I grew up at a time when values were valued. You knew the values and you valued them. They were values you could appreciate; values you could aspire to and values that motivated. I grew up when there were mentors you could say societies were proud of. This was a time when things were very certain, when people knew what was right and what was wrong; what was good and what was bad.Those days, there was a certainty in the society. If you stole, society would expel you from among them. If overnight you became wealthy without being able to explain it, your society or your people would expel you. You have to move to the cities where there weren't many people from your area who could not recognise you. Therefore, there was certainty about how we were supposed to behave and what we wanted to be.I grew up at a time the entire society took care of you, the entire society had a vested interest in you ' whether they knew you or not as far as they could identify not only whom you were, but also what you were.What do I mean' Let me illustrate with how I used to get to Igbobi College in Yaba from Ilesha. My mother would take me to the motor park in Ilesha and then hand me over to the driver of whatever bus I was going in. She would tell the driver that 'When you get to Ibadan, please put him on a bus going to Lagos and tell the driver that when he gets to Orthopedic hospital on Ikorodu Road at Yaba, he should stop and allow my son to disembark from the vehicle and watch him cross the road and walk down.' And that was always what happened each time she handed me over. My mother didn't know who those drivers were but she trusted them. Most importantly, to the driver I was a secondary school student entrusted into their care. They never went to school secondary but they did not begrudge me my status. Instead, they took pride that they were taking care of a secondary school kid and that was how I would be passed from one hand to another hand. Even other people in the vehicle who saw when my mother brought me would be reminding the driver. And when they dropped me at Orthopedic Hospital with my bag on my head, there were people living on both sides of the road that leads to Igbobi College, who knew that I was an Igbobi College student ' they didn't know me as an Akinyemi, they knew me as an Igbobi College student. And therefore, they took interest in my safety.Also, I grew up in a society where there were no class distinctions. We called everybody brother with the respect that went with it, including those drivers ' the drivers they gave me to. You dared not call anyone of them driver, but brother. Once any person was older than you, he was brother. In school, there were also no class distinctions; nobody would ask you 'what did your father do'' That was not an issue. You didn't make friends based on what your father or mother did. There was this thing that irrespective of what our parents did, the fact that we were in secondary school we were all equal. Although we were going to go our separate ways after graduation, when I was in Igbobi College, I didn't go out of my way to look for the son of another principal or the son of another Anglican priest, no. The late Segun Awolowo, the son of late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, was my senior in Igbobi College. He got no preferential treatment because he was the son of a premier. You obeyed all the rules like everybody else.So, against that background, we shared a commonality in how we wanted Nigeria to move and that we were going to be agents of this change. Then, we believed that education not money would be the agent of that change. The post you occupied after you graduated from the university was another agent of change. That is why I said we shared a commonality of values. The kind of competitions we had was the kind of collegiate competition you expected in those days ' Kings College, St Gregory, Igbobi Grammar School ' more of a united type because we were being groomed to be the agents of change in Nigeria.From your experience, what can you say is responsible for the loss of those cherished values you just painted in Nigeria of today'I would say this: the loss of values started in 1962. Before I speak about what happened in 1962, let me take a step backward. At independence, we had a constitution that our leaders fully negotiated, even though it was not a perfect constitution. But, it was a constitution that reflected the consensus among them. In the regions 'West, North and East 'we had what I would call a healthy competition or healthy rivalry among these three regions even though the government in each region had a different ideological bend. I think those ideological differences were minor when compared to their commitment to the development of their regions to make sure any region did not lag behind. When a premier introduced a programme in his region, the other would examine it to see if it was something they could emulate. And if it was, they would either rework it or make it better or just adopt it. That was why we ended up with free education, investment in agriculture with the setting up of farm settlement and free heath services. Even in the north, students were paid to go to school. That was the extent of values that the Sadauna and northern elite put on education. The first television station, WNTV, in Africa was set up in the West. Nigeria was coming up with the first that, the first this and so on. Up until that point, all these values that I was talking about were in place ' merit, probity, integrity.Then, what happened in 1962' Because of political rivalry, a state of emergency was declared in the old Western Region and the Federal Government imposed an emergency and removed the government of the day. The leader of the ruling party, Chief Obafemi Awolowo and others were put in prison and charged for treason. Also, an unpopular and minority political leader was imposed on the West with the might of the Federal Government.Now, what is the relevance of this to your question' The relevance is that at that point in time, what you were was no longer relevant; it was which party you belonged to!For an infraction of rules after 1962, you couldn't discipline a teacher if he or she belonged to the ruling party.I will give you an illustration. As I said earlier, my father was a principal at Ilesha Grammar School and also a member of the Action Group. In fact, he was also a member of parliament. The same party was in power in the West. In spite of the fact that my father was among the leadership of the Action Group, whenever the inspector of education was coming from the ministry of education to inspect that school, I knew how jittery my father was. Because being a member of the ruling party made no difference. The inspector was coming to do his job.Of course, after 1962, that would never have happened, it should have been 'Haa the principal is our member o'. And so, rules and regulations started being broken by the ruling party based on party allegiance and from then on, we have been going backward. Of course, that then led to 'Operation Wetie', civil disobedience, civil insurrection in the west, there was civil insurrection in the Plateau among the Tivs and then the coup was staged followed by the civil war. Since then, we have never managed to recover that role of values as something that should be cherished.Now, you don't ask where a man got his money. There are societies in this country where I understand the richest man would even tell the chiefs to shut up and sit down and nobody would ask him where he got the money from. Now people are being arrested for stealing, embezzlement among others and the people in the community led by the Oba would be petitioning the Federal Government for mercy, forgetting that the money this man stole was their own money ' money that would have been used to provide water, roads, education, health services for them and their children ' that is what this man cornered for himself. Rather, they would say 'he is our son,' and that is how far we have fallen into abyss in this country.People said you are a gentleman that picks his words. Also, you have your own unique mode of dressing. Are these what you picked up while growing up or a matter of accident'I don't really know. First of all, about the way and manner I speak, I am a teacher and as a teacher, you pick your words carefully. Also, I am a university lecturer. Being Director-General of Nigeria Institute of International Affairs (NIIA) and being a minister are just political appointments. I started life as a teacher and still regard myself as a teacher. And as a teacher, you pick your words slowly and deliberately so that at least you carry the students along with you.All the other things I suppose they were acquired. The way and manner I dress, that is just me. You can see me now; I am casually dressed. I am wearing Ankara shirt. These are things you look back and say when and why did I start wearing bowtie and why' Frankly, I don't know. However, from a purely utilitarian point of view, a bowtie doesn't get into the soup like a long tie would. A bowtie stays in its place while a long tie is likely to be flying left and right as you walk. Also, I like neatness and I like order.I place high emphasis on order and I think orderliness leads to justice and not the other way round.Apart from commenting on topical issues, what really have you been doing since you left government'They are all matter of public knowledge. I go around giving lectures, attending conferences. I write academic articles, merely intellectual exercise. From time to time, I am called to serve on committees. If I say serve on boards, people will start to think of boards where you make money. The Uwais Electoral Reform committee, I was called upon to serve on that. I just returned from leading the Commonwealth delegation to observe the Presidential election in Gambia. At times, I get an invitation to come and deliver some lectures abroad in a university. Those are the types of things that I do for a living.But since you left government sir, people have been expecting that you would go into politics'Politics will mess me up and will mess me up very badly. It is rather unfortunate that the way and manner politics is played in this country gives no room and no space for people like me. You can't have an Obama in Nigeria; it's just not possible. There are ethnic factors to contend with and when I say ethnic factors, I am not talking about the usual minority versus majority, East versus West, South versus North kind of thing. Even in your hometown, they will tell you that you come from the northern senatorial zone; it is the turn of southern senatorial town. It is when they want to use your brain, they will say 'Oh! We need someone to give a lecture. Get Professor so and so.' The way we play politics in Nigeria aggravates all public institutions and public posts, including even positions that would not expect to be affected by the virus of the Nigerian political system,As a university professor, former DG NIIA, former minister and international diplomat, especially as the leader of delegation of Commonwealth election observer mission, would you say you are fulfilled at 70'Yes, without hesitation. Well that came from you. If it came from me, it would be like boasting and I am not a boastful person. But, I recognize that God has been good to me. I have been the beneficiary of the gracious and awesome love of God in the talents he gave me, and the opportunities he has given to me, to use the talents. I am also grateful to Nigeria for the space Nigeria has given me to be who I am. And I then thank God for the opportunity to use what he gave me for the benefit of institutions and countries that I have had to interact with.You mentioned my last trip to Gambia as leader of the Commonwealth delegation to observe the presidential election there. Let me reveal something here. For the past two years, the Commonwealth Secretary-General had been trying to visit Gambia. It wasn't possible. About six to eight months ago, the Deputy Secretary General went there and could not secure an audience to meet the president.But, the tradition of Commonwealth electoral delegation is that at the end of the exercise, you ask to meet the president. But against this background, I was so sure that we were not going to be received. But still, we had to do the normal routine thing. So, we put in a request to see the President of Gambia before leaving town. Lo and behold, a reply came back that he would receive the leader of the delegation.At least this came as a shock to all of us; a pleasant shock that we had to call the Commonwealth Secretariat in London to say there had been a development. The president said he would receive us and he did. What was even more interesting was that when we met him, after going through the usual protocol of paying respect and all that, after about 10 minutes, their Minister of Information came and signalled to the press men to leave the room and they started packing their cameras and every other thing.But President Yahya Jammeh said, 'No, I want you to stay. I want you to hear what they have to say about the election we had, hear everything.' So, they stayed and of course, I gave him an oral report of what we were going to possibly later on submit to the secretariat. After pointing out the positive aspect of what we observed, I then told him no human being is perfect, that there are certain areas that it would be helpful to Gambia if he would pay attention to those areas. He then gave a reply.The interesting thing was, that whole encounter was played word for word on their national television. They didn't remove anything. They didn't add anything too, including my criticism. In fact, the lead story was that the leader of the Commonwealth delegation, Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi, asked President Jammeh to create more democratic space in Gambia. The following day, it was all on the front pages of the newspapers.Now, the Commonwealth secretariat couldn't believe that he would receive us, spend so much time with us and listened to us as well as allow the media to cover it. I felt personally satisfied, I felt elated by this. Now, I don't know why he did it, but he dragged me to do an analysis, a conjecture about why he did it.Perhaps, it was due to the fact that he was dealing with a former Nigerian foreign minister. In order words, the respect for Nigeria reflected back on me. When we met him, he started up by telling me he knew about me.So, to some extent, how I have managed to carry myself in whatever things I have done in this life also reflected favourably back me. What I mean is that when I really had to criticise President Jammeh, I didn't do it in an abusive manner. I did it in a diplomatic manner. I said, 'Mr. President, you won the election, you won massively, overwhelming votes. This is to empower you to do the most difficult things you need to do.' The way I had put it, there was no way anybody would take an offence and yet I told him that there was a difficult decision that he needed to take.Also, I guess Nigerians give me a lot of respect wherever I find myself. I don't know a better way to put it. People so much favour me in this country. But I still insist on rules being obeyed.So, I feel fulfilled. That is not to say that I am completely a happy man. Obviously, I cannot be. I cannot feel fulfilled and happy where Nigeria is when compared to where Nigeria should be. I am not. No man is an island unto himself. A man can only feel completely fulfilled when not only he is fulfilled, but also his total environment is fulfilled; his society is fulfilled; his nation is fulfilled and his world is fulfilled.There are no personal regrets, it's regret about what my nation should be and what it could be and it is not yet.How can we tackle the problems of insecurity, like Boko Haram and others confronting the nation'Yes, we can and that sounds like the Obama mantra. Provided we do certain things. There was a time when people thought insecurity was a Niger Delta problem. Let me go back to the time of independence. People thought insecurity was a problem of the Middle-Belt. Later, it became insecurity was a Western region problem and then insecurity became the civil war and Eastern problem. Now, you are asking me about Boko Haram, which is insecurity in the North.When are we going to realise that we have some basic issues, which are not peculiar to one part of Nigeria, which we need to address' In order to avoid the emergence of this insecurity group or what people called the militant group, when are we going to realise this problem exist'Each time you get a new government, they will say, 'All issues have been solved, the presidency is there, the national assembly is, the governors are there and the state houses of assembly are there. The constitution provided for everything.' Yet, from different parts of the country, guns are being point at them.It is either they are not aware or they are incapable of doing anything about it. We need to have a conference ' call it a constitutional conference, national dialogue ' we need to talk in a sanctioned way around a roundtable or rectangular table.Things started to fall from our hands in 1962. That was when the constitution was destroyed, the constitution that reflected the consensus of views. Since then, the constitution has reflected the view of whoever, usually the military in power when we have the constitution.The military will tell you that, 'these are settled areas, don't go into them.' But those settled areas are causing serious security problem for us. Until we are ready to admit that and have this great debate or great dialogue, we are not going to solve those problems.There has been this fear that a national conference or an unhindered constitutional conference will lead to the break up of Nigeria'That is really the biggest fear over this national conference issue. I always say to people when I have an opportunity like this: think carefully. How is this country going to break up' How would the South-South decide to secede' What do the South-South have in common' What do the Ijaw have in common with the Ogoni' Just because you give them that geopolitical experience called South-South' But may be it is the Southwest that will secede, but there is nowhere in Nigeria that is more plural in political thinking than the Southwest.If you based it on Yoruba nationalism, what do you do with the Yoruba in Kogi or the Yoruba in Kwara; what do you do with them' Or in the Northwest, where you have the Hausa-Fulani, which is a misnomer. It is either you are a Hausa or Fulani. How will the Northwest secede and become a landlocked country to the sea. Is it the Middle-Belt that is going to secede' The Middle-Belt again is a geographical expression. What is holding all of us together is living within Nigeria. People have been saying that the amalgamation of 1914 was the beginning of some of our problem. The amalgamation of different ethnic groups into this entity called Nigeria is not a uniquely Nigerian phenomenon.When I teach my students either here or abroad, that is the first point I make to them. You talk about artificial boundaries in Africa. Tell me what continent you have national boundaries. The boundaries in Europe are drawn as a result of war. There is no European country that is uni-cultural. They have different nationalities; Spain does, Italy does. That is why for years Belgium couldn't have a government because the warlords couldn't agree. Is it Switzerland that is not fragmented along this ethnic line or United Kingdom (UK)' The amalgamation created a reality, it is for us to make that reality work. To solve the problem created by that reality. To me it is a defeatist attitude to claim that 1914 created a problem and then the solution is to go back to pre-1914. In any case, if you go back to 1914, the Yoruba were not united. The Ibo were not and go back to 1914 and probably have about 150 nations in Nigeria. That is what going back to 1914 will give you.The amalgamation of 1914 might have created problems for us or created issues for us, but let us turn these issues into a possibility that could be addressed. It will be a boring life, if there are no issues to be addressed. But the most exciting kind of politics should be happening in Nigeria because there are many things to address and we should have the wisdom to address those issues provided we are honest with one another.And two, the arrangement we are looking for is not one where a section or a group claims economic, political, religious, cultural superiority over other groups. Those are the only two issues needed to address these issues. But as long as we refused to address them and we turn ourselves into this issue of false security that we the elite are managing things to our own credit, or advantage, we are digging our own grave.The Northern elite thought everything was fine, that they were in control, but underneath, Boko Haram was digging that tunnel. Who is suffering most from the Boko Haram' Is it not the North' In the East with all the kidnapping, who is suffering from the kidnapping and hostagetaking, is it not the eastern elite' The South-South when the militants were really angry, did the action spread to my village' No. We the elite are digging our own grave. When we think everything is fine, politics as usual, no shaking, there is a lot of shaking underground because various groups are digging the ground under our feet.We need to go back and have a constitution that reflects a consensus of ideas. The last constitutional conference that can be called genuine constitutional conference was held in 1959.In particular, would you give the current Jonathan government a pass mark, given the resources at its disposal'In some aspects, President Jonathan is lucky in the sense that the economic collapse in the US and in Europe gives him an opportunity to put in place policies that will help Nigeria to recover lost grounds in terms of its economy. I believe that he has to watch out for a second colonisation of Nigeria, in the sense of the massive unemployment in Europe and in Asia leading to an influx into Nigeria of Europeans and Asians looking for jobs. Not necessarily the most qualified. It is all over the place. You can see people from China, Europe, from Russia, simply migrating into Nigeria, occupying and doing jobs that Nigerians can do and should be doing. I don't mind the whole concept of expatriate quotas, if you get an expatriate engineer, coming to do a job for which there is no qualified Nigerian. But when you get Asians going into street trading, that just shows you the depth of the problems. And unless policies are put in place, that is going to create massive unemployment problems for the Jonathan administration.He has got to watch out for that. Factories and companies are moving out of Nigeria into other West African countries. I think policies have to be put in place to entice them back.I know that part of the problem is this energy problem. He is tackling it. Unfortunately, the energy area is not one place where you just turn on the tap and like water flowing, the solution starts to flow out.
Click here to read full news..
