PDP has a lot to learn from ANC – Ambassador Buba Marwa

How did you come about this Nigerian Achievement Award, in the first place? Well, I have spent close to one year and one of the things that I discovered after I took over in South Africa in the Nigerian Mission here is that there is a negative stereotype of Nigerians. A few things have happened […]

How did you come about this Nigerian Achievement Award, in the first place?

Well, I have spent close to one year and one of the things that I discovered after I took over in South Africa in the Nigerian Mission here is that there is a negative stereotype of Nigerians. A few things have happened while I have been here that demonstrate that the treatment given to us across the board suggests that there is a perception that Nigerians are generally unlawful, dishonest people, scammers and all the negative attributes. Then, I thought, in addition to the formal channel that we have pursued in dealing with such with the Ministry of International Relations and Cooperation, which is called Foreign Ministry here, that we needed to do something of our own to showcase and demonstrate that Nigerians are essentially solid people, good, trusting, law abiding, hardworking, and decent people. And I thought one way to do this was to do the awards, for the host community to see for themselves that Nigerians who have been living in their midst for years have been contributing positively in this place. If you look at the professions, particularly in medicine, there are hundreds of Nigerian doctors across South Africa, mainly in rural areas that are doing very well. If you take them out of South Africa today the health system will have issues and difficulties and the same thing all over the place. The idea is that we had to take this positive step as a first step and it is something that we need to sustain and also expand down to the grassroots.

Watching the event yesterday, there was no doubt that there was a good organisation and effort that went into place, how did it take your team to put this together?

We had an organising committee that worked on the organisation with two chairmen, one from the mission and one who happens to be one of the ministers in the mission, Mallam Nuhu, in charge of economic matters, and the president of Nigerians in South Africa, who gave the vote of thanks. We worked together with them over the last couple of months. They were very committed because they knew exactly where we were going and, in the long run, we had an excellent awards night. They did very well and so did the judges. They had complete free will as, in some instances, I had advised that we had a winner per category but in some instances they came up with two winners. So they actually introduced some awards that we did not think of. But the good thing is that they had complete independence and the event went well.
Do you have an idea of the exact number of Nigerians who live in South Africa?

I have an idea but maybe not exact; figures have been mentioned of about half a million but in my opinion I think it should be around 150,000. I think so, though I’m not sure.

Are you talking in terms of registered Nigerians or with others who are not registered?

Just Nigerians; they do not register, we are just encouraging them to come and register. I have gone round about 2500kms across the country by road, addressing Nigerians in the various provinces to be law abiding and to excel in what they are doing, and in each stop we encourage them to register, because we need to know where they are especially when we have a situation of xenophobia, like in the past, though we hope they do not happen again, but then we must be prepared for any eventuality. So, they must be registered and I tell them if you do not register and you call me to help you, I may not, because I will not be sure if you are truly a Nigerian or are you just calling me now because you have a problem or you are probably a national from another country. So they are gradually registering, but I think it will lie around that but I’m not sure we are more than 200,000.

You also have to do work for Nigerians in neighbouring countries like Lesotho, Swaziland and others.

Actually, I am a non-resident ambassador and High Commissioner to Kingdom of Swaziland and Kingdom of Lesotho, and a resident ambassador in South Africa. So, I’m actually ambassador to the three countries and I visit them regularly. It is just that I have to be resident here. So we work with them and also recognise those of them that did very well.

Nigeria contributed tremendously in the struggle for the liberation in South Africa, so much so that Nigeria became one of the frontline countries along with the countries that were bordering South Africa and then independence came. What are the major issues today in the Nigerian- South African relationship?

Well, first of all, I was delighted, on October 1st anniversary celebration, this year. The South African government was represented at the event by the minister of state security. I have attended as we all do several other anniversaries by other countries and they do not send ministers to represent them. I was quite happy that they did and his remarks were very clear about what we have done for them in the past during the struggle and so on. I think they recognise that fact, I must say, and therefore treat Nigeria with some great respect and admiration. Of course, we have had cases of some irritants below the important layers of government. But as far as the Nigerian- South African relations is concerned, it is very cordial in all its spheres particularly in all the bi-national commission, we are doing very well in which we have spent 10 years. Before I go into the details of that, I mentioned earlier irritants. Sometimes in the immigration and security, there is a lot of harassment on Nigerians based on the stereotypes. But this is not a government policy at all; it is an independent decision by over-enthusiastic staffers who do these things. And the issue before us now, if you remember as far back as communication is concerned, as you know the MTN revolutionised communication in Nigeria, others have, of course, since joined, Glo and the others. The MTN, I think, they have 25million subscribers out of about over a 100millon, which is a quarter of the population. In their business they are doing very well and in other areas of trade and leisure activities. In infrastructure, we do have their companies for consultancy and actually in real estate and so on. In areas of diplomacy there is a lot of co-operation. For instance, problems of diplomatic and official passport; we will very soon be able to have a waiver for visa between the two countries. We expect the agreement to be signed in November in Lagos. In the areas of travel between the two countries, also, if you recall, the South African airlines use to fly three times a week, then later four times. But now we have two flights everyday, one by Arik and one by South Africa Airways. And that is still short of agreement that was signed in November for 20 weekly flights.
In the security area, too, we have people who train and teach in their military institutions here and, of course, in area of mines, energy. We have agreements we are cooperating.

You have talked about irritants. How much economic movement there is but it seems to be that there is a lot more movement from South Africa into Nigeria and there is not a lot of Nigerian business coming this direction. Is there any effort to really get Nigeria to take more advantage of the South African economic environment, apart from what we have seen of individual Nigerian initiatives in this direction?

Yes, one of the things that happened is in the banking sector. I think First Bank, Union Bank, and Zenith have taken steps with the South African authorities and they have granted them dispensation in full retail banking. But, I think, they are calculating very well before they establish because the banks here are very big and for you to compete you really have to be substantial in size. So I think they are looking at that, the opportunity cost of doing business here or elsewhere in smaller countries. I think that is that. Equally this country as you know has gone very far, we must admit, in infrastructure and science and technology and so on. You find out there is a limitation as to what business Nigerians can bring here. For instance, you can’t come and do road constructions or homes in that sense, it would not make sense. But we have the gentleman who won the business award, he is in real estate. We have a few that are doing that but you know business. At a point, I thought that, maybe, they were shutting the doors and they were not allowing people and it was one way traffic. But I looked at it and, truly, there is a limitation on the scope of what we can come and do over here. But in the bi-national commission, also, we have the co-operation between the ministry of commerce (ours) and their own ministry of trade and investment. So it is an ongoing thing. One of our prominent businessmen whose name I will not mention is rumoured to be about to establish a cement factory here, but I do not have the details of that. But such scope is possible and we encourage it.

Your name was recently mentioned as one of the people owing money to a bank in Nigeria. What exactly is the story?

In fact, the other day, the governor of CBN was around and he mentioned that there was collateral damage and said I would understand and I said, yes, because the entity owing or claimed to be owing is the airline rather than my good self. But I should take this very good opportunity to address this issue very well. Aviation is a very expensive business and you do not buy aircraft off the shelf like bicycles. When you finance planes, you fly the passengers and take the revenue to pay back and we were doing that until 2002. EAS fell, unfortunately, in Kano, killing all the passengers. The plane that fell was called the BAC111.  And the government banned all BAC 111 after that crash. At that time those kinds of planes were the main stay of Albarka Airline and, in fact, we had just acquired three more planes of the sort then, but they were yet to be flown in to join the rest of the fleet. So we raised the issue with the government, that other airline that had BAC111 had also crashed and they had not being banned. We cannot say because a Peugeot crumbled then all Peugeots are bad. We made the case and, at that time, the government said that they were not totally banning it, that it was just a temporary ban until after the crash was investigated and it took about a year for the report on the crash to come out. The investigators were brought in from Canada and Britain and they cleared the BAC111 aircraft, that the accident was as a result of a defect in the plane and NCAA actually wrote back to the Ministry of Aviation that the BAC111 should resume flying. But the government kept mum over it. We took the issue at a time to government and they agreed that the plane was not defective but the ban stays and we said okay. Meanwhile, we were not flying passengers and then we wrote and said since government has banned the planes by saying that they are bad planes already they were stigmatized because even if we were asked to fly we wouldn’t. But we had to make a claim to be paid. I said even when I was in government in my opinion and a particular piece of land is best utilized for a school, road or hospital of course I will compensate the owner of the land. I won’t take it and just leave him there. We made a case and I am telling you that it is now how many years and still they have not looked at that direction of compensation. So definitely, there are issues that need to be addressed particularly in the aviation industry. But since I’m no longer chairman, I had to relinquish that. But the shareholders have since gone to ask for redemption through legal means. They have written now to His Excellency, the president, and I believe he is a humane man and a man who believes in the rule of law and a man that will do justice to Albarka and to its share holders. So that is really the situation. Now the Unity Bank claims that Albarka owes it, I’m not in a position to accept or deny, they are in court and I happened to have been a director at that time. I think that is where my name was mentioned, but I am not the one owing.

I mean do you think the PDP is doing enough, especially at the centre in Nigeria? People seem to be complaining that there is a lot of lethargy in terms of administration and the way the government touches the lives of the Nigerian people.

The PDP has its own set of challenges and I can say that as a politician who has seen the ANC operate here in South Africa. ANC is not as big as PDP but strong, tough, no-nonsense, disciplined and when the ANC leadership speaks, the members comply. I would say in closing this phase that surely there is something for the PDP to learn from the ANC and I have in fact taken steps to bring the two parties together. I have attended ceremonies of the 97th anniversary of the ANC and, I tell you that at that occasion the President of South Africa was there but he was not even mentioned in the programme, it was a full party affair. He did not even address the occasion; it was the president of the ANC that had the day, it was his day with his executives. But, you know, that won’t happen in Nigeria. And then you look at September last year when the ANC recalled their president. At the time, he neatly followed and the next day he threw in the towel and resigned. There is a lot for us to learn. Of course, they are 97 and the PDP is just 10. So we will learn and, as I have said, I have initiated a process, at least, we have had one meeting by the Executive Committees. Internal democracy, we will continue to repeat, is essential, very important in the party and for the progress of the party.