Interview
No force on earth can stop Nigeria from collapsing! – Akogun Tola Adeniyi (Part 1)
Akogun Tola Adeniyi, veteran columnist, author and former Managing Director of the Daily Times of Nigeria, has argued that Nigeria as a country has no future, noting that with the way the country is going, its eventually collapse is inevitable.
The Jagun Oodua, who sat down with Business Hallmark’s General Manager, Henry Amune, and Senior Correspondent, Obinna Ezugwu, for this explosive interview, also talks about the subversive roles of foreign powers in Nigeria and other African countries, among other issues.
Excerpts
You’re going to be 80 in the in the coming months…?
Yes, in about a month or two from now I would be 80. I mean, precisely on May 29.
Looking back, how does it feel to have come this far and still be looking agile as you are looking at almost 80?
Am I looking agile? I don’t look 80, so they say (Laughs). But really, I don’t feel anything. I mean, except the normal challenges of aging. I still see myself as the Tola Adeniyi I was in the secondary school, and in the university. Except that maturity will not allow you to exhibit some attitudes. Otherwise, I still remain the same person I thought I was from when I was a youth.
I still fight injustice, I still seek for good governance. I still seek for honesty, sincerity, probity and all that; which I was doing when I was young. I mean, in the university I led the group to a professor’s house and forced him to carry a bag of rice on his head because he stole our rice. It was the domestic warden who confided in me that the reason the food quality was declining in the hall was that the hall master was stealing bags of rice and taking them to his official residence. So about 2am one night, I led some group of boys to his residence, woke him up and frog-marched him with a 50kg bag of rice on his head. The details are in my autobiography, which is coming up very soon.
You have been fighting. You used to write scatting articles when you were with Daily Times and the military boys never stopped looking for you. There must have been ideas you had about how the country should be run. Looking back, do you feel we are where you thought we would be?
No. In fact, we are hundred miles backwards. In other words, we have retrogressed by 100 percent instead of progressing by 100 percent. So, we’re not where I thought we should be. It’s just not it. At the time I was in Daily Times, if the corruption in the country was 10 percent, it is now 99 percent. There’s no basis for comparison, we are just far behind where one expected or projected we would be. So, nobody in my generation will say that he’s happy with what is happening in the country.
Is it down to corruption; I mean, how did we get here?
It’s not just corruption. The thing is that from the amalgamation period, we’ve not had a country. From 1914 till today, what Lord Lugard got for the people living in this geographical space was not a country. It was just a mishmash, and it was a place that belonged to nobody. And because it belonged to nobody, everybody was doing whatever they liked. Nobody owned it because it wasn’t a nation; it was an amalgamation of so many nations.
And so, like, Achebe wrote years back, the centre could not hold because there was no centre. I mean, if you have a pot of soup that does not belong to anybody in the family, and every child had access to it, everybody would just treat the pot of soup anyhow. So it’s not just the question of corruption, it’s just that the pot doesn’t belong to anybody. So, nobody will give it any respect or any seriousness.
Nigeria from 1914 did not belong to anybody, and did not command the respect of anybody. Therefore, it’s not just corruption. We’re talking of mismanagement; we are talking of nepotism; we are talking of arrogance of power; we are talking of impunity. We are talking of so many things. But when we use corruption, we just make it look like it’s about people stealing or people misappropriating funds.
Corruption is by far beyond that – more encompassing. Even the idea of quota system is corruption. When somebody scores 5% in Zamfara and he is given admission in the unity school and somebody scores 90% in Enugu and he is denied admission because the quota for Enugu has been filled up, that is corruption. That’s corrupting the educational system; corrupting the admission process.
Does it feel like a hopeless situation?
I wish you listened to the interview I just had with Edmund Obilo. Somebody sent it to me on YouTube. I saw it there about an hour ago, and it’s about one hour plus. You know, as far as Nigeria is concerned, I am an unrepentant pessimist. I don’t believe there’s a future. There’s no future for what is called Nigeria.
The future that I know may happen is if the Igbo have their own country, the Yoruba have their own country, and the Fulani, if they are lucky, are given a small space in Sokoto, which is Hausa land, and they put their 7m people somewhere, or they create somewhere for them in the north of Zamfara or north of Kastina so that they will be so close to Niger. And then, the seven kingdoms of Housaland, if they have their own country, yes, I can then talk about having a future; a future of countries that will emerge from the present day contraption called Nigeria.
But as far as the country itself is concerned; I mean as far as what is called Nigeria is concerned, there’s no future. It is going to collapse. It’s going to break up. There’s nobody… there is no force on earth that can stop Nigeria from collapsing. No country run this way can ever survive.
What kind of collapse are you foreseeing? Is it going to be, as we’re already witnessing, a Somalia kind of scenario, in which case you’re going to have warlords in different parts of the country?
It’s going to be worse than Somalia if not well managed, because Nigeria is a large geographical space. I mean, Somalia is a small place. All these other countries are small countries. Nigeria is so huge. We’re talking about 250 million people. It’s going to be a catastrophe. It’s gonna be an explosion. You know, there’ll be so many wars. I mean, even within the Izons; the people they call the Ijaw, they’re going to have a maybe about three to five warlords there, because that’s the oil rich place.
And so, every lord will carve a space for himself. The Yoruba appear monolithic, but, again, some will say they don’t want to bow to Ibadan; they don’t want to bow to Lagos. An Ijesha man may say no, I don’t want to be part of Nigeria or I don’t want to be part of Yoruba nation. So, that may also happen. But if it is well managed, as it happened in some other countries like Czechoslovakia, which broke into Czech Republic and Slovakia, and several other countries like that, everyone will be better for it. Yes, they did fight there, but it was not as terrible as what happened in Somalia.
If our political elite, or those who are still respected in this country like Chief Emeka Anyaoku can be allowed to chair a committee that would negotiate peaceful disembowelment of Nigeria, that would be fantastic. And it’s very easy to do. I mean, we have about 250 nationalities already here before the white man came. We have ethnic boundaries.
The Yoruba are well defined, the Itshekiri are well defined. The Igbo are well defined. The Ijaw are well defined. The Tiv’s are well defined. You can as well have a situation where the Tiv and a few other people around them agreeing to come together and form their own nation. And then you have Edo there, which is large enough to be a country. There are so many countries in the world that are less than one million people, and they’re doing well.
It’s just wrong headedness that will make some people to insist that this contraction must continue. Because nobody’s benefiting from it, not even the Fulani. There’s insecurity everywhere; there’s poverty everywhere. If the Fulani had a country, they’ll be better off than they are today. If they had a country, they will do their livestock business – their animal husbandry in a way that they’ll be exporting milk and all that to other countries of the world. But because we have a country where there’s free money from oil and free money from corruption – from customs and excise – nobody is challenged. Nobody has any competitive enthusiasm to do anything, because every month you go to Abuja to collect some money, and then you come and share it, that’s all.
Around 2016 and 2017, there was this push to find solution to the country’s problem. The topic was restructuring. But it appears that suddenly everything has died down. Why is this so?
Well, some years back, maybe some 20 years back, I canvassed the idea of confederation like we had in the First Republic. Let Nigeria be divided into about eight components, and let each component be semi dependent. That, I thought, might be the solution. But over the years, I have found out as long as there is one country, confederation will not even work in Nigeria. Restructuring will not work.
Confederation will not work in the sense that – and I’ve written about that in several articles and on television and radio programmes – the peculiar problem Nigeria has, which we always tend to gloss over; because when you talk, they say but India has so many ethnic nationalities and maybe Britain has the Welsh, Irish, and English and so on. America has German, blah blah blah. Canada has Anglophone and Francophone; they have Quebec and so on.
But the peculiarity of Nigeria, which makes it different from all the other examples that you may quote, is that there are specific ethnic groups in Nigeria that want to dominate and perpetually cling to power. And by force, by fire, to remain the overload of the country. I also found that these people were the last comers to Nigeria.
The Igbo had been on the Nigerian soil for more than 2,000 BC. The Yoruba have been here for so long. The Izons have been here for years.
So, some people could not just have come in 1804 or thereabout and want to drive away those who own the land. If the English people said they want to exterminate the Irish and the Welsh, of course, that will be the end of United Kingdom. In Canada, if the Quebecers want to exterminate the English speaking section, that will be the end of Canada. If California people say they want to kill everybody in any other state, in Delaware or whatever, that would be the end of the country.
So the major reason we have problems in this country is that there’s no love and no respect for individual identity. The Yoruba must respect the Igbo, the igbo must respect the Yoruba, the Hausa must respect the Tiv. The Ijaws must respect the Effik and the Ibibios. But that is not there. Some Yoruba would believe that Igbo are inferior. Some Igbos will feel that Yoruba are ‘mgbati mgbati people; they are this and that.
So, we don’t have that kind of respect and dignity attached to being together. Even, ordinarily, in every marriage of just one man, one wife, if the wife has no respect for the other or vice versa, that that marriage cannot last. So, there’s no mutual respect among the components of what what is called Nigeria today. Then, because some people believe in dominance and domination, restructuring can never happen. We’ve been talking about restructuring for over 20 years. It won’t happen. Ordinary state police, they can’t approve it. They talked about it during the Buhari time, and I told them that it will not happen. Over a year ago now, the Tinubu government said they’d submitted papers. They’ve made some approvals and so on, but it has not even been debated at the national assembly. This government cannot create state police because the interests are so entrenched.
The centralization of the of the police is one of the greatest weapons being used by those who want to continue to dominate this country. Because they know, and I’ve said that before, Adewusi in 1981, ’82 and ’83, had created a police force that was as strong as the military. In fact, they had all the equipment of the military. That was why, when Buhari came in December 1983, the first thing he did was to dismantle the police. Because they know that if the Igbo had their own police, that could be as strong as the Nigerian military, or the Yoruba have their police – because once you have your police, nobody can tell you how far you can develop them, they can challenge any federal military. But those, who want to continue to dominate this country want to monopolize the Instrumental violence.
Looking at the current government now, one would have thought that Tinubu, who happens to come from this part of the country should at least push for restructuring. Are you disappointed that it has not been the case?
Well, I must confess, I don’t want to talk about Tinubu, and I’ll tell you why. Many people never truly understood who Tinubu was, and even now, few care to. Most only say that he loved power, pursued it, and finally attained it. But the mechanisms, the thought process, and the driving force behind that ambition—what I call the actualization of that ambition—can only be known to Tinubu himself.
Take the Save Nigeria Movement, for instance. It turned out to be less about saving Nigeria and more about removing Jonathan and paving the way for either Buhari or Tinubu’s ambition.
What I’m saying is this: I don’t want us to dwell on who Tinubu was before becoming president. There’s a saying that before a woman becomes a wife, she presents herself with a certain character. It’s only after marriage that her true self emerges. The same applies to men—during courtship, they tidy up their homes, put their best foot forward. But once married, everything changes.
Human beings tend to hide their true selves until they attain what they want. It’s what I call “stoop to conquer.” A struggling man, striving to become great, won’t behave the same way as when he has already achieved wealth or power. That applies to politicians too—before power and after power are two different personas.
So, you’re saying that even those close to Tinubu may not have truly understood him?
Precisely. Like I said, I prefer not to discuss him. And for the record, I’ve never criticized him—publicly or privately. You can check my records: I’ve never written anything against him, never queried him. Not because of fear or favour, but because he has always treated me with the utmost respect. I’m also not in the habit of publicly criticizing people younger than me—though in Tinubu’s case, I can’t say for sure if he’s younger. We don’t really know. But he calls me Egbon (elder brother), and I accept that respect.
Let me give you some examples. During the funeral of Itua’s mother in Ibadan, the MC announced my presence. Tinubu got up—this was during his time in government—and walked across with El-Rufai and Jimi Lawal to greet me. When Senator Durojaiye turned 80 in 2003 or thereabouts, and my name was mentioned at the event in Ikeja, Tinubu again got up to greet me.
Back in 1992, I witnessed a near-fight between him and someone, who later became Minister of Petroleum, during a heated argument about the annulment of an election at Nicon Noga Hotel. Tinubu, who supported Abiola, was spoiling for physical combat. I stepped in and said, “You’re a senator. Stop it.” And he stopped immediately.
In 2007, I mediated a quarrel between him and governor Daniel of Ogun State. Professor Adebanwi called him and said, “Chief Tola Adeniyi would like to see you.” He immediately called me back and said, “Egbon, they said you’re looking for me.” I said yes, and he asked where we should meet. I told him I don’t go to the Island, so he suggested Isaac John Street in Ikeja. We agreed on 2pm, and by 1:55 pm, I was there. He gave his phone to his aides, locked the door, and gave me three full hours of undivided attention—no interruptions. He was governor then, yet he treated me with such regard.
I have known him since his younger days in Ibadan, though he might not remember. With all these experiences, he’s not someone I want to criticize or condemn. If I feel strongly about anything, I know over 90% of the people around him—I have enough channels to speak to him privately. So, why should I criticize someone who has shown me consistent respect?
Don’t you think it might be necessary to advise him sometimes?
From the feelers I’ve received, those who have gone to advise him have seen little or no effect. The Yoruba say, “You don’t value medicine you didn’t pay for.” So, why offer unsolicited advice?
If he felt I had something valuable to offer, and he reached out or invited me, I would freely share my opinion. If he called me today, I’d go and see him without hesitation.
But I don’t overrate myself. I don’t consider myself some special figure that the President must consult. That said, I still advise heads of state in other countries. So, if things get so bad that I feel personally compelled to book an appointment and force my way in to talk to him, of course, I will do so.
Some might argue that while the insecurity didn’t start under him, the economy has deteriorated significantly. Don’t you think things have gotten bad enough to warrant reaching out?
Let me tell you something — most African leaders are not truly in charge of their governments. There are powers and principalities outside their lands that essentially tie their hands behind their backs.
I don’t fall for appearances. The forces that shape Africa’s future are not on African soil. Institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are two of the most destructive agents influencing African nations and their leaders. By
Many African heads of state, in their desperate bid to hold on to power, are willing to mortgage the future, security, and prosperity of their people. It’s like asking Mobutu Sese Seko to defy the dictates of America when it was America that put him in power — after using him to eliminate Lumumba.
That’s the unfortunate position many African leaders find themselves in. And as the Yoruba say, “You can’t blame those who fear Sango; they’ve seen how terrifying his wrath can be.” African leaders have seen what happens to those who challenge foreign interests — exile, assassination, poisoning, regime change. So,1 what do most of them do? They play it safe. They just want to survive their four or eight years in power, with their heads still on their shoulders when they leave.
This is the reality. I don’t believe most African leaders are truly in control of their countries, their policies, or their destinies.
Now, what makes Nigeria’s situation worse is the complete collapse of checks and balances. We don’t have an effective opposition. We don’t have a credible National Assembly. We don’t have a judiciary we can confidently rely on. And this didn’t start with Tinubu. It didn’t even start with Buhari. It has been a gradual erosion.
Those who are supposed to serve as checks on the executive have sold out — compromised by inducements. Even state-level governance has been centralized. Judges’ salaries are paid from Abuja. Their promotions are decided from Abuja. If you’re the general manager of a TV station in Enugu, Abeokuta, Ibadan, or Benin, you can’t even hire someone or award a stationery contract without clearance from Abuja. What kind of federation is that? Everything flows from one source. And when that happens, you inevitably get dictatorship, tyranny, and utilitarianism. Nigeria is over-centralized, and it’s been this way since the military era.
To be honest, since the 1966 coup, we’ve never truly had a civilian government. What we’ve had are governments wearing agbada — military rule in civilian clothing.
How deeply entrenched is this foreign influence in our system? And even if the separation you talked about happens — for instance, different nations within Nigeria becoming independent — don’t you still see these foreign powers playing a role to ensure that progress is still hindered?
That’s a very good question. Quite frankly, I’ve never really thought about it in those terms. For example, even if we were to have a Yoruba nation, would America or other foreign powers not still interfere? And would such a government really be different from what we currently have at the federal level? That’s what you’re suggesting.
My initial response would be this: if we have a proper country — a true nation-state for the Yoruba people — and we do not practice the so-called Western-style democracy that America or Europe promote, interference becomes more difficult. If we adopt a more indigenous or monarchical structure, depending on how we present and organize ourselves, it would be harder for external forces to infiltrate or manipulate us.
Also, when you have smaller, more focused states, the interest of global powers is usually less pronounced. You see, they don’t actually want Nigeria as a strong, unified country. The major powers don’t want a nation in Africa that could rival France, Germany, the UK, or the U.S. Nigeria, because of its size and potential, poses that kind of threat — if only we had gotten our act together. With visionary leadership, Nigeria could have been a major player in global politics. But unfortunately, we never had that kind of leadership.
Now, that was during the Cold War era — the fear of Russian or Soviet influence played a big part. But things have changed. Look at countries like Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali today. They are standing up to the West. It’s still a work in progress, yes, and the outcome remains uncertain, but, at least, they are flexing their muscles. They’re showing that strong and determined African leadership is possible.
Even if these current leaders don’t last, the point is that a foundation is being laid. If Burkina Faso had Thomas Sankara in the past, today they have Captain Traoré. If something happens to him, another might rise. Maybe Traoré lasts three years, his successor could last six, and the one after that maybe ten. That’s how revolutions and transformations evolve — step by step.
So, yes, you’re right to raise the concern. But I believe that if we had smaller, more autonomous nation-states like a Yoruba or Igbo nation, the extent of foreign interference wouldn’t be as deeply rooted or as pronounced as it is in the current Nigerian federation. Still, it’s a very thought-provoking question, and I’ll definitely give it more thought.
To be continued…
