Buhari’s government is directionless –Ojuma

The National Convener of United Action for Democracy (UAD), Gabriel Ojuma in this interview described President Muhammadu Buhari’s government as directionless and clueless, in economic policy and in all aspects. He also described the July local government elections in Lagos State as joke and a caricature of democracy.

The President is back. What is your reaction?

Well, he is welcome. Nobody wants him dead. Every reasonable person should be happy that he is back. What some of us were saying before was that as a public figure, he ought to have made everything public because his life is public and he has no private life to live as long as he is the president of this country.

NCP sued LASIEC for preventing its candidates from contesting in the July Lagos local government election. What do you make of it?

You see, UAD is not a political party; we are a human right movement, a coalition of some pro-democracy groups. We are not into political activism so to say in terms of contesting an election under UAD. In UAD, we have other organisations like; OPC, NCP, Citizens Rights Defenders, CLO and other human rights and cultural organizations. We are to ensure enthronement of democracy by making sure that those institutions that make democracy thrive are well positioned and are alive to their responsibilities. For example, INEC, Police and every other organisation that makes democracy to thrive.

That is one of the primary aims of democracy, so we don’t run for electoral positions but we have affiliate organizations like the National Conscience Party, NCP.

So if NCP or any other party feels aggrieved, they have the right to institute an action.

I want to emphasise that the issue of impunity cannot be tolerated, a situation whereby Lagos State Independent Electoral Commission, LASIEC or INEC is not independent. Any organisation that meant well for enthronement of democracy in Nigeria should take off its garment to fight and make sure that the right things are done.

Prior to the election, LASIEC amended the law allowing parties to substitute candidates three days to the election but UAD said it only favors APC. Could you expatiate on that?

What we were saying was that you cannot be at the middle of the game and change the rules. If you do that, there must be a primary motive. Everybody was prepared before the election and suddenly, three days to the election you came up with the issue of amending the electoral act so as to favor certain people.

I think that was the view and exactly what they did. And we said that was not what a body in Lagos State government that is interested in free and fair election should be doing. If anybody raised eyebrow, they are justified. If you look at the constitution and vis-à-vis every other law that regulate election generally in Nigeria, you will feel that these people have motive and interest in which they want to promote and protect, hence the hasty amendment.

On the issue of the election, APC has its own issue and every other party also have theirs. When I said that APC has its own issue, I learnt that some of the candidates alleged that some godfathers in APC actually manipulated the whole thing and imposed some candidates on them. I understand that some of them are in courts now and some also intend to go to court.

That is their internal arrangement anyway but if the election generally was not fair as some are saying, I think they that feel aggrieved should go to the tribunal. However, we at UAD, we look at the whole thing as a joke and a caricature. We feel that LASIEC is not as independent as we would love it to be. There are some things that are not in tune with proper conduct of a free, fair and credible election, so we condemn the last local government election in Lagos State.

As a pro-democracy group, what is your position on the persistent call for restructuring and constitutional amendment?

You see, the issue of restructuring is on the front burner in our politics today. Some people are clamoring for restructuring, some secession while some are calling for fiscal federalism. If it is restructuring, I will say yes, fiscal federalism yes, generational change in leadership yes and no.

This is why. If you say you want the leadership of the country to be taken away from the past leaders to the present generation, if you look at the happenings today, you will see that our problem is not having the youths in power but the quality of leaders. So what we need is qualitative leaders with antecedents of good characters.

Our young ones are equally very corrupt, they are in cyber café today doing yahoo, yahoo. On the issue of restructuring, if it is to restructure, those that are in leadership today at the center will go back to their states and still lord it over their people. So, our problem is not essentially restructuring.

You cannot just trust the issue of leadership on just one person. Leadership is not just based on one person. I don’t want to go into the issue of character of the present government because they don’t have a pass mark.

We need people who have demonstrated the tendency to work for the masses, whether young or old. We need leaders who are not corrupt. Our problem is corruption.