Why Obama and Clinton got it wrong on Nigeria – Senator Jibril Aminu

Let me explain this. It is not unique. There are a number of academics who have found themselves in politics. In my own case, I tell people that it was a continual drift from one place to another encouraged by people who thought that the drifting was okay. Let me give you a very brief […]

Let me explain this. It is not unique. There are a number of academics who have found themselves in politics. In my own case, I tell people that it was a continual drift from one place to another encouraged by people who thought that the drifting was okay. Let me give you a very brief outline of that. As a doctor, you work in a hospital. But you can also work in a teaching hospital; so you become a teacher as well. And when you are teaching in a major institution, like a medical institution of a university; you also become a university person as well not just a doctor and a teacher. And sometimes you could be given an administrative position. So you also become an educational administrator. From there, being an educational administrator, you could get responsibilities of administrator beyond the College of Medicine. For instance, you could be appointed a vice chancellor. And if you are a vice chancellor, you are an administrator of education at the national level. Therefore, you could be made a minister. If you are made minister of education, you could be made a minister in any ministry.

As a minister, you are actually holding a political appointment.  And, if you are holding a political appointment, you are a politician. Eventually, you could move into an elective position as a politician by joining a political party. It is therefore a question of whether you choose to go to the executive or to the legislature; or even one after the other.

So, in that sense, is just a progressive drift, it may sound logical to some people. I just look at it as a will of God. But I know that at every stage, I was encouraged by people. In all of these posts, the only one that I ever campaigned for, and decided whether to be appointed or reappointed, was coming to the Senate. Because that is where you have to do it yourself, you can’t get there on appointment. You have to get there by the votes of the people and you have to ask for it, if you want.

As a politician now, do you miss your professional calling as a cardiologist?  

To say that I miss medical practice, yes, I do very much. When I was in NUC, I used to deliver lectures in the University of Lagos once a week.  Also, when I was a vice chancellor I tried to lecture for the first year. It wasn’t easy. But you can’t really take patient’s care because you won’t be fair to the patients by your constant travels and leaving the work to other people to do.  But I still did some medical practice at a spare time then.

As an educational administrator, what is your take on the on-going ASUU-FG stand- off. Where is the country moving with our universities closed for more than two months?  

I think people read too much meaning into it. I don’t think we need to talk about where the country is going when talking about the current industrial dispute in education. There may be other things wrong with education, there may be other things wrong with the country but that is no reason to conclude that the country is going to doom.

The cases of ASUU and even that of the Non-Academic Staff Union (NASU) and Senior Staff Association are disputes that have been going on for a very long time.  In the course of my career in educational system, I participated in lot of them in trying to solve them, particularly the prolonged ones during the Second Republic. I didn’t have any disputes with them over condition of service when I was the Minister of Education for four and half years. This is despite the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) riots among others. But after me, I knew they had a lot of problems. I just want to show you that these things have been going on for a very long time.

ASUU has been spearheading this. Usually, when they start an industrial action, other staff unions in the universities follow, depending on how successful they have been. If an award is made to ASUU, the other unions also insist that the award be made to them. That is why if the one of ASUU is not being resolved, that of the other unions will not be resolved too. The moment you resolve the one with ASUU, you will likely resolve shortly after with the other unions.

As a member of the Senate Committee on Education, I have been fairly familiar with the issue in this current one. The ASUU people met me in my office after one meeting with them and we sat down and discussed for about an hour. It seems to me that the ASUU people are saying that they have been having too many of these meetings and every time, some interim solutions are reached, and the public will appeal and at the end they would go back to work and negotiations will stall until  they go on strike again.

They have also been saying that the mode of negotiations was not the one they thought they were having. They have a catalogue of demands in the form of a book, their own proposals, clause by clause. And they are saying that the government should not just pick about five or six issues but should look at all this catalogue of issues. The major areas of disagreement are only about five. They are also saying that whatever the government agrees with should be allowed in this catalogue.

I understand also that what they want is not an agreement which is announced but a book which they will pass on to the next generation of leaders; and say these are the things we have agreed to be implemented. If they are not implemented, each one could  be a cause of dispute because we had already agreed on it. That is what they are saying.

The government, on its side, is saying that the Federal Government is not the employer of the teachers. They didn’t employ them. The universities are statutory bodies; each one has its own laws passed by the Parliament as at that time. The employer is not the FG but the councils of the universities. That is the law. And they can’t override the law and go and negotiate with the FG and leave their basic employers.

For instance, the ASUU of University of Maiduguri should negotiate with the Council of the University of Maiduguri. And, of course, the FG owns most of the universities that was why they agreed to negotiate. They got the pro-chancellors, who are the chairmen of the councils to come and negotiate with the union and whatever they agreed with will work across the board. And subsequently implement these agreements at the various universities locally. That is the kind the government wants. And ASUU knows that because they are very senior and intelligent professors. I have met with them. I don’t think they can fail to understand all this points of law.

I think their emphasis is on the point of what is practical. If you negotiate with FG, that is the minister or eventually the president, and then whatever you agreed with stands a better chance of being implemented and accepted. It still boils down to who provide the funds and the FG provides the funds. These are the kind of arguments.

ASUU is not a union of federal universities; rather it is a union of all universities. They have, within them, people that come from the state universities and private universities. So, the FG is taking the position that constitutionally, apart from the fact that it should really, in terms of Common Law, negotiate with their direct employer, the FG will not sign an agreement which will be binding on the states as well. The union will always say that it is okay and they will appreciate that so. Let us sign with the federal union hoping that they can now use the force of the number of the federal unions to make every state governor and so on sign it. The law, it seems here, is relegated to the background. What really matters is your ability to get your own demand.  And that is why the negotiations stalled.

And this is the first time they are having a disagreement with this president and the minister, who were both former governors and also university men. Probably, if they give them time and go back to work, they will test the goodwill of this people and have a stronger case. And the children would have been in school, their courses wouldn’t have been disrupted. I knew a young man who went to a medical school and spent 10 years instead of five. This is the kind of things happening now and it costs money to parents and so on. The only thing missing is the gesture of goodwill on the part of ASUU. Let them go back to work and test the goodwill of this president and the government and see whether it will work.

Let me also add that some of these strikes are timed and aimed to be most inconvenient to the students. Some students have got examinations in two or three weeks and suddenly the teachers down tool. This is not calculated to bring goodwill between the teachers and the students. My experience in the university is that whatever arguments the management side gives, the students usually side with their teachers. I think the teachers should be very particular that this particular sympathy is not eroded over time.

Politically speaking, what is your relationship with the former President Olusegun Obasanjo and vice president Atiku Abubakar?

 

I don’t think if there is any connection between my relationships with Obasanjo and that of Atiku. I knew Obasanjo from the time I was Executive Secretary, NUC, when he was the Chief of Staff Supreme Headquarters to General Murtala and later he became head of state. We were very close up to 1979 and remained and worked together at every opportunity until he returned as an elected president in 1999. And he called and sent me as an Ambassador to the United States. When I came back, I came to the Senate and we worked harmoniously together.

As for the vice president Atiku Abubakar, the first time we really started to work together was when we were coming to the Constitutional Conference in 1994. We worked together on that one. We joined hands with him and Alhaji Bamanga Tukur to take over the government of Adamawa State. He was interested to become the governor and he was elected the governor one; and by the grace of God, he became the vice president. While he was vice president I was in the US. That is what I can say for now.

Obasanjo and Atiku, who were hitherto at loggerheads have recently reconciled. What is your relationship with Atiku now? 

 

My relationship, I am in PDP and he left the PDP, formed the Action Congress (AC) and there he is. So, there can’t be any political relationship between us. There can’t be any relationship between people in two different political parties.

Even at a personal level?

You mean at a personal level? I don’t think it is important.

The United States Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, was here recently. She used that visit to drummed home the fact that Nigeria is more or less a failed state. As a diplomat and Senate Committee Chairman on Foreign Affairs, how do you see Clinton’s comment? 

 

There is no outsider, who is a sort of prefect that has to come and comment on what is going on in this country. That is not the relation between two independent nations. America is the richest country and the most powerful. But we are also a proud country. The relationship in the world of diplomacy holds. Actually, we all deserved to follow the simple rule of decency. And Nigeria is a sovereign, independent state, and that is the only thing which to me matters in considering what to do or not to do.

But there was a report by the US National Intelligence Council that Nigeria will break up in some couple of years to come due to bad leadership…

They didn’t say so.

What actually did they say then?

It was about five years ago, when the National Intelligence Council speculated on what will happen if Nigeria disintegrated. You know this kind of scenarios, a lot of countries do it. Some of them will begin to draw scenarios on supposing that you are not alive today, what will happen?  This is the nature of the intelligence community, particularly in America, as they consider themselves the policeman of the world. So they always draw these suppositions and many people were upset, including the former President Obasanjo. The issue was brought to the Senate, then to my committee and we travelled to the US and found out what was going on. We found out that it was just a normal routine analysis. And it could be full of mistakes. Look at the evidence, for example, by the great Collin Powel to the world as evidence of Weapons of Mass Destructions (WMDs) in Iraq turned out to be a thesis of a British PhD student. So, we have to be very careful about these documents.

But President Barack Obama was in Ghana, not Nigeria. Didn’t you find that scornful?

I am not worried about why he went to Ghana not Nigeria. What I was not happy about were some of the things that was said by him and his Secretary of State about Nigeria because I didn’t think it was their business to do that. But then, they have all the books, the details, all the communications and all the armaments; so they are enjoying them. I think they probably have realised that was not how they should approach the issue. With all respect to them, neither of them was secretary of state, nor a president. So, they are entitled to make these mistakes. I doubt if a man like Jimmy Carter or even Bill Clinton will say such things. But we have to give Mr Obama the benefit of the doubt, particularly that he thinks he is an African and can say anything on Africa. I don’t agree with that.