NIGERIANS HAVE OIL MENTALITY; WE THINK AND ACT OIL – OBASANJO

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo was at his modest self when he spoke to TRUE NIGERIANS recently. He admitted failure in some of the ventures he undertook, albeit fearlessly. Not least of all was his bid to contest for the post of the United Nations Secretary General, which was vetoed not just by one country but two even though one is enough. He also talked on the security challenges facing the country, noting that frictions here and there are part of human interactions. Obasanjo also added for good measure “religion is not a cause of conflicts”

Have you ever failed in your life before?

There is no human being on earth, no matter how long your strings of success may be, who will not have certain areas that do not go down well or not as expected. For example, I contested for the post of Secretary General of the United Nations, some time ago and did not win. I don’t know what then failure is if not such. My international friends thought that if you want to change the world, the UN must be one of the instruments of bringing about a new international order.

I was with them in a group that we call interaction council of former heads of government. One day, they just said to me look, we are here discussing annually about what we can do to change the world, and shouldn’t we get one of us to take on this assignment of Secretary General of the United Nations? And we considered you appropriate for the position.

Initially I refused, but they insisted and went further writing to people including my own head of government then. The long and shot of it is that, the attempt was made, but I did not succeed. One of the veto powers in the UN, before the voting started saw the Nigerian permanent representative and said “oh you Nigerians are funny, aren’t you” and the Nigerian permanent representative said what do you mean we Nigerians are funny? He said it’s about the Secretary General of the UN and he said no we are serious about it.

I got two vetos even when one is enough and that made me a distinguished failure!

When you were the President, you took the bull by the horn and most people yelled due to the temporary pain then, were you not afraid of some of your decisions?

Well it depends on what you mean by elements of fear. Any human being who does not fear God…

Apart from God sir…

The fear of God must be in any human being and I have the fear of God and respect for human beings too. I worship my God and I fear God, but having said that, I believe no matter the position you hold, which means you are managing human beings, you must be guided by certain principles and still you want to do the greatest amount of good to people even when you cannot please every everybody.

Isuues in the land use act.

Check the amount of problems we have before the land use act; then you will find same piece of land being sold to different people and that cannot help development. Look at countries where revolution have been taking place in the world, land is one of the issues. Then we are one country with different land tenor systems; it doesn’t look right.

I believe that we need a land use act to make it easier for people to own land and to make land available for development, which will also harmonise the land policy in the country and possibly get us away from possible revolution. We saw it as something that needed to be done and so we went ahead and did it.

Two groups of people who felt that they have been badly hit started a fight. Today it’s there for the good of the nation.

Investment in agriculture at personal and national level

The colonial masters groomed us on how to grow our agriculture to a commercial quantity, cash crops as they call it. But after the Second World War and shortly after our independence, oil became a significant factor in our economy and then we all developed an oil mentality. Oil mentality means that there is nothing important in our lives, business wise other than oil. We think oil, we act oil. And in the process we forget agriculture.

I must say that even when I was military head of state, you will remember what we call OFN, Operation Feed the Nation. Then we looked at what we can do at the governmental level, we had something that they call ADP, Agricultural Development Programme, which was supported by the World Bank. By the time I left government in 1979, we were very self-sufficient in rice production and others, but the government that succeeded us decided that no, things must be made easier. Whatever easier means. So how do you make things easier? You import rice, and if you remember, the government that succeeded us actually established a presidential taskforce for importation of rice, not for production of rice, which I believe is nonsensical just to put it mildly and then importation of pastries which destroyed the industry.

For food security we need three things; availability (production), distribution and affordability and rather than abolish subsistence farming, they should be, while we encourage commercial farming, until the small scale farmers find an alternative means of livelihood. We should move the small scale farmers who are up now, down and move the commercial farmers who are below upward, but not to eliminate the small scale farmers like that.

National security

When you talk of lasting peace, I take it that you are talking of relative peace in the sense that you don’t have bomb blasts and all that. For me I don’t want the peace of the grave yard, which is not good enough. Wherever you have human interaction, there would be a little bit of friction.

I think that is a soldier’s perspective…

Not that, it is the principles of human interactions…

I agree with you, because even in the family there are traces of violence…

Wherever you have relationships, there must be such. I grew up in a family house where as students going to school, we were about fourteen, eating from the same plate and if you are lucky to get your hand four times into the “Eba” plate before it finishes, you must count yourself very lucky, but then some will say, why do you step on my toes, why do you cross your legs and it torched me and so on, so it is the same and I think it’s good for communal life.

People tend to see religion as a cause of conflict, but I don’t. I was happy that when our religious leaders – Christian and Muslim – looked at the Jos issue, they came out categorically to say it was not one caused by religion. Now what do you find? You will find both social and economic issues, where you have a group called settlers and another group called natives. If the settlers tend to step on the economy of the natives, something will spark. That can be either traced to religion or politics. Now the nomadic farmers carry their cattle all around the place, while the crop farmers are static watching over their crops and when the nomadic farmers come, they trample on everything and when that happens the crop farmers do not fold his hands and conflict will ensue. The nomadic farmers by virtue of their tribe and tradition are mainly Muslims, while for the crop farmers by virtue of their tradition and history, are mainly Christians, but those who want to give us a bad name will call them enemies.

Any Solutions?

I believe that we must hasten development.

In other words poverty has a hand in it…

Well, the most of it is due to our underdevelopment, because if the nomadic farmers have permanent places where they will have grass and water for their cattle, they won’t be roaming about. What can we do to make that happen? We must do something to make that happen.

Then who is a settler, and who is a native, now it depends on how far back you want to go. We can all be settlers in Nigeria, or we can all be natives. For instance my own people are talking to me now in Abeokuta, but in 1820s the Owu people who settled down in Abeokuta and by other calculation one may say my own people are also settlers here.