JIBRIN Ibrahim, a professor of Political Science, is a Senior Fellow with the Centre for Development. He was the director of the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD). In this exclusive interview with The ICIR Nigeria@64 series tagged ‘Independence Watch’, the scholar-activist critically x-rayed Nigeria’s political journey through nationhood within the past 64 years of our independence. Here are the excerpts:

The ICIR: Let’s start with the arrest of the NLC president by the Department of State Services. Even though he was later released, what do you make of that arrest?

Jibrin Ibrahim: I think the arrest was an absolute disgrace. It’s clearly part of a government strategy to intimidate social forces that have the capacity and the mandate to protect the interests of the Nigerian people.

As you recall, they have arrested those demonstrating youth that participated in the #EndBadGovernance protests all over the country.

Even though they had appealed to the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) not to join and it agreed not to join, they are persecuting the NLC, harassing its leadership, and threatening them with brim and hellfire just to make sure they are sufficiently intimidated so that they will not protest in the October protests that have been spoken about by the protesters.

I think to arrest the leader of trade unions on his way to an international conference just to intimidate the unions is totally unacceptable in a democracy. I regret that the Tinubu administration believes that it’s alright to engage in such reckless behaviour.

You see, the situation is very straightforward. The Nigerian people are hungry. They are angry.

You see, the situation is very straightforward. The Nigerian people are hungry. They are angry.

They are hungry because the increase in the price of fuel and transport and the great decline in the value of the Naira following the policies enacted by this administration has reduced the purchasing power of Nigerians. People’s take-home pay can no longer pay for their feeding, transport, and other needs. So they are upset.

Therefore, as citizens in a democracy, decided they were going to engage in a series of protests. The response of government was to say there is an international conspiracy in which the NLC colluded with external actors, brought in money to push people to demonstrate. This is completely senseless. People are hungry.

Do you need a foreigner to come and tell you you that you are hungry, you should cry? It is a natural reaction of people who find themselves in great need at a time in which their families and themselves are in complete distress.

I think the reasons for the protests are directly the policies of the Tinubu administration. And the earlier the government understands that it is the one making Nigerians hungry and angry, and that therefore there is no foreigner or conspiracy to look for, the better for them.

The ICIR: What do you make of the treason charges brought against some of the protesters?

Jibrin Ibrahim: Well, I am very worried about that, because part of the charges against them is terrorism. So when you are hungry, and you go on the street and tell government you are hungry; that makes you a terrorist?

This amounts to making nonsense of the definition of terrorism in a country that is actually suffering a lot from terrorism. You cannot say this about Nigerians who have a civic consciousness that a democratically elected government is not doing the work it should do in their interests. Just because they complain, you simply categorise them as terrorists.

We are in a situation that is much worse than this country was under the General Babangida and General Abacha dictatorships, where they tried to shut up all Nigerians by putting them in jails, shooting them, and preventing them from demonstration.

But President Tinubu should know, in spite of what the military dictators did, Nigerians still came out on the streets and demonstrated against those regimes. So if Tinubu thinks he can intimidate Nigerians into suffering in silence, he needs another thought coming.

The ICIR: The Nigerian government through the NNPC effected an increase in fuel price. This added to the pains citizens were already going through as a result of the removal of subsidies. What are your worries?

Jibrin Ibrahim: Well, my worry about this is that for over three decades, Nigeria, although a petroleum exporting country, has not been producing refined petroleum products, including petrol, diesel, and other products.

Finally, a private Nigerian sets up a refinery that starts producing these products. Any sensible government would talk with them and see, given the fact that government has said it’s spending a major part of its revenue to buy petroleum products from abroad in dollars. Now that it is being produced internally, you need to discuss with these producers to see whether they can sell it at a reasonable price.

The government has not told us what price Dangote is offering and what they think it should be the best price for it to sell. So there isn’t even a discussion. It’s just keeping them at bay, saying they can go and do what they want with their product, and ignoring and setting aside the vital interests of this country, which is we don’t want to continue using all our foreign revenue to buy fuel from abroad.

It shows a total lack of concern for the interests of Nigeria and the Nigerian people. And quite frankly, it is disgraceful. Well, I never knew what it meant to say that it was a mistake.

The ICIR: Some Nigerians have described the 1914 amalgamation of the then Northern and Southern protectorates as a mistake in our nationhood. Do you share in this thought?

Jibrin Ibrahim: The mistake was in 1903, when the whole of the current Nigerian territory was subjected to colonial rule. We lost our independence. We lost our sovereignty.

A foreign power took over the country and its resources for their own aggrandisement. That’s the issue. At that time, there were two British protectorates or colonies, one in the north, one in the south.

So for their own convenience, the British amalgamated them. How is that the issue? Isn’t the real issue the colonisation of the entire territory itself? That, for me, is a serious issue.

The ICIR: Looking back at our journey and struggles towards independence, would you say the labour of our heroes past was in vain?

Jibrin Ibrahim: I think engaging in a struggle for liberty is never done in vain, because it produces hope, it produces enlarged possibilities for progress.

The fact that we have had in our independence difficulties of achieving the heights we are capable of achieving doesn’t mean the work of the nationalists was in vain. What it means is that those of us that came after the nationalists should have worked much harder to achieve the objectives for which they fought. And their objectives were very simple and two-fold.

One was to use Nigeria’s resources for the good of the Nigerian people. Secondly, to improve the welfare and standards of living of Nigerians. Those were the objectives they fought for.

These are objectives we must all continue to fight for, and it is possible, because Nigeria has the resources and the people to transform its economy, to use its resources for the good of the Nigerian people. Unfortunately, the style of politics we’ve adopted has been enmeshed in corruption. And the majority of our political class are corrupt and are more interested in their personal aggrandisement than the interests of the Nigerian people.

The correct attitude to take in this context, therefore, is to struggle to get a new generation in the political class that will struggle for the public good, that will struggle for the interests of the Nigerian people, and not simply focus on stealing the resources of Nigerians for them and for their families.

The ICIR: Talking about our leaders from the First Republic to the current ones, what is your assessment in comparative terms?

 Jibrin Ibrahim: I think there’s been a significant evolution. When you look at the first generation of leaders in the First Republic, and the second generation of the military leaders that took over, first and foremost, they all had a sense of the public good.

That is, they understood that public office is not for the interest of the person in office, but for the interest of the people of this country. They all had very clearly this sense of, I’m in a position to promote the public good, to defend the citizens of this country, to improve their welfare, to get them jobs, to get their children educated. That’s the spirit with which they engaged in public office.

I think the second thing about that generation of leaders was that they really had a strong sense of accountability. That the public purse, the public treasury, is not where you dip your hands and take money for yourself. That it is to be used for that public good I’ve spoken about.

Therefore, it is sacred to protect and preserve the public treasury to ensure it is only used for the good of the people. It’s really with the second generation of military rulers, especially Generals Babangida and Abacha, that that sense of integrity began to disappear. And as integrity disappeared, and this sense of public good started to disappear, that we got ourselves into serious trouble.

Unfortunately, I thought in 1999, that the emergence of democratic rule will bring back that sense of the public good and integrity in governance. Unfortunately, for the last 25 years, the current generation of politicians, each one that comes is worse than the previous set. Jonathan was certainly better than Buhari that came after him.

All Nigerians are now saying that Buhari is much better than Tinubu who came after him. Why should we be cursed of having new leaders that are always worse than the ones they met in office?

Why should we be cursed of having new leaders that are always worse than the ones they met in office?

It’s our national tragedy, and we need to address this tragedy. I think one of the problems with our democracy is that democracy and its main instrument, which is elections, is conducted by political parties.

Political parties, we know what they are in political science. It’s an aggregation of people with a common interest. They think that coming together, fighting for and obtaining power, will enable them to do good for their community, for their state, for their country.

Now, when the Fourth Republic emerged, unfortunately, most of the parties that emerged were run by godfathers, literally owned by individuals with money who were able to use money to control who gets into position of power and to further benefit from these people until they are placed in positions of power.

I feel that you cannot really make democracy work for the people until the people themselves begin to take over the apparels of their political parties. Nigerians have to join political parties, they have to democratise political parties, and they have to orient those political parties to work for their interests.

If that doesn’t happen, we’ll continue with this type of rapacious ruling class that we have that’s so focused on stealing from the people rather than working for the people.

The ICIR: But there have been electoral reforms and you personally participated in the reform committee headed by a justice,  Uwais during the late Yar’Adua era. What is the missing link with our electoral reforms?

Jibrin Ibrahim: I think the Electoral Reform Committee, which I served under Justice Uwais, was very focused on looking at the problems with our electoral system and seeking solutions to those problems. The first thing we focused on was that for the Electoral Commission to work optimally, it should be fully independent.

We made recommendations on how to choose leaders of the electoral commission through advertisement, through public bid for people to be nominated, through public scrutiny, and finally processing through the National Judicial Commission to make sure people who run the electoral commission are very competent and have integrity. That proposal has never been implemented. The second issue we raised is that the courts are becoming too involved with our electoral processes.

The second issue we raised is that the courts are becoming too involved with our electoral processes. People will vote, and at the end it’s the court that will decide who the winner is.

People will vote, and at the end it’s the court that will decide who the winner is. In an election, it is citizens who have voted that determine who the winner is. We made very clear recommendations that in an election, the onus of those who are contesting outcomes should be to call on the electoral commission to demonstrate with facts and evidence who was the actual winner.

If the question of who has won cannot be shown empirically, then you cannot have an election in which people have confidence. The burden of proof shouldn’t be on somebody who has been cheated out of office. It should be on the electoral body to prove who voted where and for whom.

Those recommendations were not accepted. Thirdly, we looked at the responsibilities of INEC, and we felt they were too broad and too many, and INEC is not able to focus on its core mandate of electoral administration. We recommended the establishment of other bodies to reduce the burden of INEC so that it can focus on its core responsibility.

Currently, for example, INEC is in charge of the prosecution of electoral offenders. It doesn’t really have the capacity to do that. So we recommended the establishment of an electoral court that will take charge of that.

We took the issue of the control of political parties. Let INEC focus on elections. Set up a commission for political parties that will make sure political parties do the right thing.

So, we made a series of recommendations that will improve the focus of INEC on its core mandate and allow other bodies to take over the peripheral duties. Again, that recommendation wasn’t implemented. The fourth set of recommendations we made is to try to infuse a quota of proportional representation in the electoral system and try to move away from this first-past-the-post electoral system that we run.

Again, our recommendations were not accepted. One of the tragedies in this country is that you set up a commission of inquiry. They do the research, they have clear findings, and they make useful recommendations, but nobody is interested in implementing those recommendations.

The ICIR: Why do you think those recommendations were jettisoned?

Jibrin Ibrahim:  Remember when we made our recommendations to President Yar’Adua, his attorney general of the federation, Michael Aondoakaa, screamed at the presentation and said, ‘you people are taking away the powers of the president, and I want my president to be very powerful.’ So it’s self-interest that’s at the bottom of this issue. They are not looking at the interests of Nigerians.

They are looking at the interests of the president and his political party. I think maybe one thing that’s clear to me is that it’s not difficult to run free and fair elections. And in many African countries, their elections are relatively free and fair, much better than ours.

The ICIR: You have also monitored elections within and out Nigeria. What are the parallels?

Jibrin Ibrahim: In Nigeria, there are too many actors who for selfish reasons want to sabotage elections to make sure candidates who are not generating votes from constituencies win an election. I feel this is a real tragedy. And what it leads me to is the conclusion that we ordinary Nigerians love democracy and want democracy to function well.

But the majority of the political class, our politicians, always want to sabotage democracy because they know if an election is done fairly and equitably, they may not win. So they rather have a system where electoral outcomes are rigged or are fraudulent. And that’s sad.

The ICIR: So, what is the real problem with our electoral body, the INEC?

Jibrin Ibrahim: Well, It depends on which INEC. The Maurice Iwu INEC, for example, was the worst INEC in the history of this country.  Professor Iwu would sit down in his office in Abuja and write results for states and announce those results, irrespective of whatever was happening in the field. I remember the famous case of the Delta election where journalists and party representatives were in the INEC office and they were counting votes.  And we just saw a report on live TV showing them counting votes. And then on the news, there was Maurice Iwu announcing totally made-up results for the same states.

So that was a totally compromised INEC. Subsequently, Professor Attahiru Jega came in and worked very hard to create the basis for improved electoral integrity in this country. I think the first thing he did was to significantly improve the quality of the voters’ list. He did a new voters’ list with real names, real biometrics of voters that would enable INEC to verify who were the genuine voters coming to vote.

There has been a great progress for our electoral system. He also introduced significant technology to improve elections. Professor Mahmoud Yakubu, who took over, has kept to that tradition of improved technology to make elections much more credible.

Unfortunately, the key technology that Professor Mahmoud Yakubu introduced that would have enabled us to see the live display of results as they are coming from the states failed during the presidential election. And that failure is a real setback for electoral integrity in this country. And I think Nigerians feel very bad about it.

They feel they have no basis to trust the electoral process anymore. I think that would be a mistake. When you look at the results of the 2023 elections, it wasn’t all fraudulent.

When you look at the results of the 2023 elections, it wasn’t all fraudulent. In many states, you could see clearly that the results had integrity

In many states, you could see clearly that the results had integrity. I think the direction of movement should be to ensure that for the upcoming elections, these technologies really work. If they do work, Nigerians will begin to have new confidence in the electoral system.

The ICIR: That brings me to the judiciary arm of government. What is your take on its performance so far?

Jibrin Ibrahim: I think like all Nigerians, we are getting more and more alarmed at the depth of corruption in the judiciary. It is clear that many judges are on the payroll of politicians and are paid bribes to produce injustice rather than justice.

This is one of the worst challenges facing the Nigerian state. If judges are corrupt, it means there’s nothing to trust in that entire state system, and everything can be compromised.

A new chief justice has emerged, and I fervently hope she will work hard to try to restore confidence in the judiciary. Above all, to identify, investigate, and prosecute judges that are known to have engaged in corrupt acts. If we don’t frontally reduce corruption in the judiciary, I think we can give up on this country.

The ICIR: What do you think is responsible for the corruption in the judiciary; more so that the pay packages of judges have greatly improved?

Jibrin Ibrahim: It is never a question of the income of the judges. A judge knows what the salary was when they entered that profession. So if you enter that profession, you have to accept what are the conditions under which you will work.

I think the main problem is that the National Judicial Council has been very reluctant to prosecute and jail judges who are engaged in corruption. A judge knows that if he accepts a bribe of $2 million, the worst thing that can happen to him is to lose his job. But with $2 million in your pocket, you don’t need that job anymore.

I think the main problem is that the National Judicial Council has been very reluctant to prosecute and jail judges who are engaged in corruption.

So, you can take the bribe and change the outcome of the case before you. But if that judge knows it’s not just that he’ll lose his job, but he’ll spend 10 years in jail for taking $2 million bribe, then he’ll think twice about taking that bribe.

So I think the onus is really on the National Judicial Council and the Chief Justice of Nigeria to apply the law to members of the judiciary also.

The ICIR: What about the legislative arm of government; how well have they fared so far in our democratic journey?

Jibrin Ibrahim: I think the legislature has also gone through phases in its development. You recollect in 1999, when the Fourth Republic started, the president at that time, Olusegun Obasanjo, was determined to control the legislature and to impose a leadership on them that are loyal to him personally.

To be fair to them, they fought Obasanjo on this matter, and worked very hard to gain autonomy from direct executive interference. When they won that battle, however, the judiciary also started suffering from significant corruption. Specifically, they went into shady practices, such as padding the budget with pet projects that are placed in budgets of ministries.

Once you start doing that, you are messing up the whole budgeting process. A ministry develops a budget based on a three-year plan they’ve been working on, based on the activities they have done in the recent past. Now they want to add to, complement, or extend those specific projects. Therefore, the whole thing is part of a policy packaged as broad.

But when individual legislators start developing pet projects, that have nothing to do with the work of a ministry, and simply place it in a budget of a ministry, and when the money is made available, they go and collect that money, then they are destroying the whole budgetary system of the country. I think it’s unfortunate that we are there.

The ICIR: What is your assessment of the current legislature, specifically?

Jibrin Ibrahim: We are now going back to the Obasanjo approach to a legislature that is totally subservient and obedient to the president. The Senate president and the Speaker of the House of Representatives are now yes-sir boys to the president. They get instructions, and simply obey.

The Senate president and the Speaker of the House of Representatives are now yes-sir boys to the president

I think this giving up their autonomy and independence is a political tragedy for this country. This is because it means they cannot do their work of monitoring governance on behalf of the people of this country.

One of the things I’ve observed is that every legislator now wants a personal project, usually to set up a college of education, or a polytechnic, or a university in his village. That makes nonsense of the work of the ministry of education, of the National Universities Commission, (NUC) and others who have a plan for educational development. It’s part of the problem of padding I talked about.

The ICIR: How would you rate President Tinubu’s government thus far?

Jibrin Ibrahim: President Tinubu has introduced policies that have significantly raised the cost of living in the country. Specifically, the floating of the dollar, the removal of fuel subsidy without palliatives to cover for the suffering of the people has created great suffering in this country. The president has said, we will suffer now and we’ll enjoy later.

Nobody has an indication of when that will occur. Meanwhile, every day, the cost of living is escalating. People are unable to get enough food to feed their families. Right now, children are going back to school. So many parents can’t take their children back to school because they can’t pay their school fees.

They can’t buy school uniforms for their kids. So there’s real suffering in the land. All this suffering has really been exacerbated by the policies of the Tinubu administration.

The ICIR: Can you comment on our current insecurity situation in different parts of the country?

Jibrin Ibrahim: I think Nigeria, as a country, has a responsibility to provide for the welfare and the security of citizens. Since the emergence of the Boko Haram insurgency, the Nigerian state has had a period of declining capacity to provide for the security of citizens. I think part of the problem has been the growth of corruption.

The other part of the problem has been the inability of the armed forces of Nigeria to re-adopt their ways, their methodologies, their strategies to fit the realities of the time. Our armed forces have been trained to engage in armed combat with enemies. Those engaged in violence and insurrection in this country today are not engaged in official armed combat.

There are people who live in communities, people who the authorities do not know. They strike at places with surprise moves. What’s been happening for the past 15 years is that the armed forces have been unable to adopt its tactics to this new situation.

I feel we need a political leadership in this country that can reorient the armed forces to be able to respond to this type of asymmetrical warfare that has been ongoing for 15 years.

I feel we need a political leadership in this country that can reorient the armed forces to be able to respond to this type of asymmetrical warfare that has been ongoing for 15 years.

The ICIR: What message do you have for Nigerians as a way forward?

Jibrin Ibrahim: I think we the citizens of this country have to be much more careful in the type of leadership that we elect. We have to stop voting people because they have the money. People who have a lot of money to put into politics are for the most part, thieves.

No society that’s proud of itself should be found electing thieves to run its affairs because they bring down the entire society to their level. We need to be more discerning in terms of candidates that emerges.

We need to identify people who have both competence, integrity and encourage them to go into political arena and exercise responsible leadership that will be focused on providing public good that will benefit ordinary citizens.

If we do not change this recruitment pattern of the political leadership of the country, we will go down the drain. So, there must be change.

Fidelis Mac-Leva

Fidelis Mac-Leva is the Deputy Editor of The ICIR. He has previously worked with several media outfits in Nigeria, including DAILY TIMES and DAILY TRUST. A compellingly readable Features writer, his forte is Public Interest Journalism which enables him to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comforted..." He can be reached via [email protected], @FidelisLeva on X