Rt Rev. Msgr John Kanebi Asuquo Aniagwu is the Parish Priest, Saint Leo’s Catholic Church, Toyin Street, Ikeja and Vicar General, Catholic Archdiocese of Lagos. In this interview, he says, among other things, that taking the 1999 constitution to the six geo-political zones for some panel-beating is not the be-all and end-all for Nigeria; the problems of the country cannot be solved until a proper federation that takes care of all the nationalities is put in place; lites benefitting from the rot in the system are comfortable and happy with the status quo because it favours them.
Ime Akpan
State of the nation
I feel apprehension; I don’t know where we are going and I fear that the worst may happen still if those who should do something fail to do what they should. Every day we see agitation here and there and one doesn’t know where the next bad news is going to come from? Every day we are hearing of killings here and there. Initially it was in the northeast; we were all concerned, praying for them there. The crisis moved to the northwest and now it is all over the country. So I have great apprehension and fear about what may befall this nation and I am praying that the worst should not happen because the way it is going, it tells me that there will be escalation of all types of tension in the country. The violence in the different parts of the country simultaneously does not speak well for the country.
Role of the church and the elites
The church is my primary constituency. So let me speak from the perspective. I want to say that the church has been like a voice crying in the wilderness. Our Catholic Bishops Conference on the one hand and Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) on the other have been making interventions, speaking every now and then but it seems that the powers that be are not listening to the church. Sometimes you get the feeling that they treat us with contempt as if we don’t really count and our voices don’t make any difference in the affairs of the country. We can only bark but we cannot bite because we don’t have any army or police or force to coerce anyone to do anything. So we have cried ourselves hoarse but those who should listen are not listening for their own reason; they tell us that our business is just to be praying. They just put it to us that we should not involve ourselves in politics. But we are Nigerians and we also work for Nigerians. People who come to churches are Nigerians and we feel their pains. We have family members and we feel their pains also. You came in through that door; 80 per cent of people that come to my office on a daily basis are coming for one help or the other. It is either they don’t have accommodation or they don’t have food or they can’t pay school feels. Today I have signed cards for two patients to go to our hospital to get free treatment. We cannot be ruled out of happenings in Nigeria because we are Nigerians. We are stakeholders and we care for Nigerians and we care for their cries. We feel the pulse of the people and unfortunately when we tell our political elites they ignore us. Let us take this corona virus pandemic for instance.
When we talk of the elites, I think they are mixed. We have those that are comfortable, who are happy with the status quo because it favours them and get all they need from the system, and obviously they are not going to challenge the system. There are also a substantial number of members of the elite who are speaking out and asking questions and desiring that things need to change. We now also have socio-cultural groups who are talking and again, they too are not being taken seriously.
Deceit in governance
When we had the first lockdown which was very serious, I know that our Bishop of the Lagos Diocese made substantial donation to the government in kind, bags of rice as palliatives. We received palliatives here that came from government through the CAN. My church here, with a population of about 8, 000 worshipper I received three bags of rice and half a bag of garri from the Lagos State government. I felt like telling them to take them away. Since that first lockdown as a church…we were feeding the people here every day. When eventually they lifted it, they were doing two or three times a day, but where is the government that is supposed to take care of the people? Food is the basic need of the people. Only for us to now discover that palliatives were being stored and hoarded in warehouses across the country. What was the purpose; do they want us to die of starvation? The painful part was that it didn’t happen in one state but all over the federation. Up till now I can’t get my head around it. Why would people do such a thing? Those who called themselves government were hoarding food meant for the people, what purpose was that meant to serve? We as a church we are talking and doing things to ameliorate the suffering of our people and the citizens of this country. If you go to our hospital upstairs, you will marvel at the crowd there. We do our bit but unfortunately we don’t have the resources of government.
We don’t have subvention from anyway; we have to rely on the contributions of our people but unfortunately because of the serious downturn in the economy, many of our church members no longer have the capacity to contribute. So our resources have gone very strained which have reduced our capacity. The things we used to do for our people we can no longer do; those who were giving us are now coming to take from us.
Past efforts to fix things the country
There are so many voices clamouring for change in this country. In 2005, President Obasanjo convoked a national conference in Abuja. I was a delegate to that conference; we spent five months in Abuja during the conference. We produced copious reports and some of the things they are talking about now, restructuring, devolution of power, a new constitution, reform of the electoral processes, we discussed all those things. The national assembly at that time said we had no locus standi and our reports were never looked at. It is there gathering dust wherever it is.
In 2014, there was another conference by the Jonathan administration that came out with far reaching recommendations which the government of the day again refused to take onboard. So it is not as if people are not talking but of course the ruling government has to at least agree to look at these things on their merit. Whatever is good take it, whatever is not good put it aside but to completely rubbish it and said we don’t want to see it I think is the act of arrogance as if they have the monopoly of wisdom.
Ongoing constitution review process through public hearing
The problem is with the constitution; the current constitution we are using does not need a review; it needs a replacement. It is a severely flawed constitution. You said Nigeria is a federation, but we are not operating a federation and the constitution is not a federal constitution. To me it is an exercise in futility; for me, the national assembly is just doing that to douse the agitation in the country. What we need is a completely new constitution; we need to replace it with a genuinely federal constitution.
Form of government to adopt
I have no problem with the federal system of government provided it is federal system that is well practised. Let’s run a federal system and ensure a lot of the powers currently with the federal government are devolved to the states. That is the problem; if we want to go back to the parliamentary system, it is okay too. In that case, you will have regions. I am old enough to know what happened in the first republic with regions and those regions enjoyed a lot of autonomy. There were many things they were able to do because they controlled their resources and contributed to the central government. I remember that each of those regions had a representative in different countries of the world.
So the problems of the country cannot be solved until we have a proper federation that cares of the people’s nationalities; it is not even the political systems.
