His Royal Majesty, King Bubaraye Dakolo, the Ibenanaowei of Ekpetiama Kingdom and chairman, of Bayelsa State Traditional Rulers Council, in this interview, says the struggle to control oil and gas resources has turned Bayelsa and the Niger Delta into a killing field. Dakolo also decried what he described as many unlicensed weapons in the wrong hands across the country

What is your assessment of traditional institutions in the country?

The traditional institution is doing quite well. It is the reason we still have a country. Before the advent of colonialism, the traditional institution superintendent over enclaves that were stated in their own right. Some were city-states and they governed well. As a matter of fact, that is why we are still here because whatever style of governance they had was resilient enough to have withstood the aggression with which colonialism came.

However, as the anti-colonial activists took over and triumphed we had what we now have as the state and by having the state, the operators of the state have been trying as much as possible to wish off the traditional institution in the country. Of course, you have seen it demonstrated in different forms such as the dethronement of Sanusi Lamido and others at different points in time. Masqueraders have now taken positions and people are applauding them as leaders when they are actually not. I’m not saying that masqueraders have also not found their way into traditional governance. They may have in some places no doubt. In spite of all this, the major safety valve that Nigeria has is the traditional government because the government can not do all it is supposed to do.

So, at the end of the day everybody comes to the chief’s house, the king’s palace and so on and so forth. Those are the ones that are bearing the actual brunt of misgovernance in Nigeria. We cannot say that so-called democratic governance has done well at all. Most of the time, complex problems that have lingered and claimed thousands of lives are resolved by traditional rulers through discussions by holding a series of meetings. Unfortunately, the major gladiators who are trying as much as possible to be relevant and be seen as the new kings and queens of this nation have tried to undermine the traditional institution.

What could be responsible for this neglect?

In many places, people are rigging themselves into office. Some are known criminals in South Africa, America and Europe among others and have returned home to shoot themselves into positions of authority. So, what they have tried to do is undermine the traditional institution. Only in a few places do the people still revere their traditional rulers. In the future, there may be changes because in recent times, the voting system is getting better where the room for rigging and shooting into power is minimized to one man one vote. In a sincere popularity contest, I believe the traditional rulers will regain their respect because that way only the person the people want will win and not those shooting themselves into positions of authority.

Most traditional rulers have advocated restructuring of the country, what is your take on this?

Yes, the country unfortunately has not been so well governed and I support those calls even though I am a pan-Africanist where the whole of Africa is just one country and where the countries as we have them now could just be states or regions. And where there will be one currency and workable agreement of governance by rotating the presidency so that we can develop intra-African movement and intra-African trade among others.

For Nigeria, it is already a country. However, if Nigeria were meritocratic and the right experts had been put in place, I can bet that this sectionalism you are seeing, the agitation for this and that would not have been there. In fact, as an Ijaw people, we have ways of being our people’s keepers. So, if today, an Ijaw kills an elephant, traditionally he doesn’t have to eat it alone. He knows that even to bring it home he will get his kinsmen to support him to bring it home. And when it is brought home he’s going to divide it into three parts. He is entitled to just one part.

The other two parts will go around the rest of the community. That is the practice.

For instance, the oil and gas from Bayelsa State, from Ijawland, ordinarily we would have managed it but when you centralize and steal it all and deprive me the actual owner from having it by bringing in some criminal legislations here and there that expropriate my wealth, restructuring becomes an inevitable thing to do.

If today a Waribo becomes president and he becomes the superintendent of the economy and his daughter is the governor of Bayelsa State and you are all doing well, nobody is going to say remove that person. It is like a football match where Okocha could play, his younger brother could play, and his cousin could play. They are all good and if Nigeria wants to win they will play. In fact, this backwardness we see now is because people see political positions as a means to enrich themselves.

It is not about work. As long as people see some of these positions as ‘belle kingdom’ and not based on competence people will advocate for sectionalism. I don’t quite believe in that and I am hoping Nigeria will be transparent enough to get to that point where it will be strictly on merit.

Many have argued that the 1999 constitution has not fostered national unity and that the country should revert to the 1963 constitution, do you agree with this?

Well, what is good is good. The 1999 constitution was a constitution written more or less by the military. Though there may have been some civilian hands that did not quite represent the people because the people didn’t put them there. So that is a military constitution and it’s masquerading as ‘we’ the people constitution. You and I know that if you are going to Brass and you face Owerri, no matter how far you go, you will never get to Brass. The 1963 constitution came out of several years of people meetings and deliberating. So, that reflected reasonably giving room to the different categories of different sets of people in the different regions in a manner that there will be a healthy competition for the people to grow. Unfortunately, a set of coups took place at the time, Ironsi came and started a unitary type of government. Ultimately, the Gowon-led government took control of the oil and gas in 1969.

From that time till now, Nigeria has remained that way and not moving forward. That is why Singapore, Malaysia and even Japan that was completely destroyed during the Second World War have all left us behind. We are not moving forward because of ethnicity and religion and the fact that things are centralized and skewed particularly against those who have the resources and preventing all of them from harnessing their God-given resources. In the sixties, there were groundnut pyramids, there was cocoa, and there were other solid minerals and other forms of minerals.

Even uranium is in this country. With the centralization of oil, agriculture was destroyed as well as textile and manufacturing. Everybody is jostling to be in charge of the oil and gas resources of this country. Unfortunately, that has made Bayelsa State and the Niger Delta killing field. In fact, the Nigeria Civil War was fought because of the control of oil and gas resources. Don’t mind what everyone else says, this is where I come from and this is where I have been living, so, I know why that war was fought. Today, if oil disappears, Nigeria will be sober and before you know it, everybody will say let’s practice regionalism and let us do resource control. Resource control is such that if you have gold you manage your gold and then you have a centralized military, regionalized police. So you can have a central police and regional police at the same time. The central police take care of certain federal policing issues and then the regional police take care of the regions in the states and others.

If you have the opportunity to meet the new President, what will you tell him to do that his predecessor failed to do?

I believe that Mr President has an agenda of his own. I will tell him to be firm but not autocratic and also not to be nepotistic. To use merit as basis for appointing people because the country is coming from a high nepotistic background in recent years. What he could do is to ensure that he picks the best from the different regions and put them in the position where they are going to function best. We should not keep using expired people, we should aspire to use contemporary minds and he should focus on improving law enforcement in a manner that people will be held accountable for whatever excesses in the course of their job. Government money is not your money so if you are given a government position to do a job you must do it. If you get a contract to do a job you must execute it.

This so-called ‘carry go’ has to end. He has to be exemplary by following the rules and letting everybody he puts there also follow the rules. The person who took the oath of office is the president and not his wife. So, he must be in charge and if he is delegating, he must delegate according to the law. We can’t have all the oil in Bayelsa and we have developed everywhere else in the country but we are still underdeveloped.

There must be more money made available to the Niger Delta. How can you have a sea border that is so porous that anybody can just get into a boat now and get to Cameroon and come back and all the Customs people are concentrated at Tincan Island? What about Immigration personnel? There is nobody here around the Brass, Okpoama, Agge making this open field for hard drugs, illicit weapons to come in. There are too many unlicensed weapons in this country and they come through the borders. Of course, the president has to liberalize import and export by ensuring that all ports in the Niger Delta are functional. He should look at that and let’s have the Miami that he says is possible in the Niger Delta come to fruition.

Where do you expect Nigeria to be in the next decade?

I believe that Nigeria will improve and the judiciary must be able to stand tall and be the last hope of the common man. Law enforcement has to be law enforcement enough that people can get justice. So, if law enforcement is doing its job and the judiciary is also doing its job then of course the electioneering process, the electoral umpire should not be a czar who is able to do and undo. There must be a systematic system of making sure that people vote, their vote counts and results are based on their vote not just that someone is able to pay his way to get some wonderful results announced.

I hope that Nigerians will participate in the electioneering process in an open way so that the biometric card reader, BVAS and others will work. In fact, we should advance to the point where you can actually vote from the comfort of your home so that you don’t have to gather somewhere and get beaten by somebody. After all, most of us do transfer money on the move. So, why can’t we just vote on the move? It is possible and I look forward to that. (Saturday Vanguard)