BEING A SOCIALIST DOES NOT STOP ME FROM PARTICIPATING IN GOVERNANCE -Lagos Lawmaker, Olumuyiwa Jimoh

Left for people like Hon. Olumuyiwa Jimoh, the best way to organize a society is to focus more on the masses rather than enriching the pockets of individuals.

Olumuyiwa, who is representing Apapa Constituency 2 in the Lagos State House of Assembly, has been a Marxist from his university days, and he is still promoting all the theories that have to do with socialism till today.

He decided to join the legislative arm of government to practice what he has been preaching as a socialist and anytime he rises up to speak on the floor of the House, he laces his debates with words that give him away as a student of Lenin, Friedrich Engels, Robert Owen, Carl Marx and other socialists of repute.

In this interview he granted us recently, Olumuyiwa speaks on why he is in government and on issues affecting the state and the country generally.

You are an activist and you tend to be a Marxist, but you are now a lawmaker, one wonders why you decided to join government

Two things have to be spelt out quickly; the first one is that government as an institution requires people that are capable, and people that have the capability. I grew up in a socialist environment right from my student days. I see Marxism as a tool to change our society and I believe in socialism. Secondly, the beauty of socialism is for you to criticize and offer solutions to societal problems because society itself is a collective social contract. State is an artificial creation of man, which is why I prefer the legislative arm; it is the arm that gives right to that artificial creation of man.

It is where the distribution of income comes in; it is not too correct, not even correct to say that those who are radical should not be interested in government, so I am also interested in power, which is why I am here. I must be able to show that I can practice what I believe in.

You are talking of socialism; do you see Nigeria moving towards that?

Presently, it is obvious that the neo-capitalist ideology has collapsed, all what they are doing is to patch it up. They said government doesn't have business in business, but we know that it is government that invest much in business, is that not socialism, the call for welfare for the people, is that not socialism. They hide under different nomenclature to practice it. They said socialism has collapsed, they gave example of Soviet Union to say it has collapsed, has Cuba collapsed, so if there is any idea that is good, the theory would be okay except if the application of that theory is faulty and that is exactly what happened in the old Soviet Union. A scholar said that there is only one world and it is the world of capitalism. Why is it that in Europe there is crisis all over the place except for some few countries? If socialism is not in operation now, it does not mean that it will not be in operation later, I see it as the best for Africa. Look at the African race, the United Nations report said as far back as 1991 that no African nation, with the exception of South Africa, has met the target of millennium development and this is 2013 and our people still use that yardstick to measure our development. So, any moment you raise this, people see you as a radical and I don't have problem with that, I have bosses even in our party, who are socialists and that is Governor Rauf Aregbesola of Osun State, he will never hide it.

If you look at the country, there is a big gap between the rich and the poor, you see some private universities charging over a million naira as school fees and some people even pay this as fees for their children in secondary schools, how can we resolve this?

Well, talking about private institutions, we told them the implications, but they are very careful, none of them is investing in courses that are costly like medicine because it consumes more money, they prefer courses such as Business Administration or Marketing, whereas Alhazir University in Cairo, Egypt can absorb all the undergraduates in both private and public universities in Nigeria, all what JAMB is admitting in one year can be absorbed by it. The university is the third in the world in terms of age, it was established about two or three centuries ago and they are still sustaining it. The fee is reasonable because government should be responsible with our public universities, but they wanted to empower individuals and they are primitive in their ways of thinking, so they gave licenses to individuals to establish universities, you will see more of it. So, if it is one million naira, by their own standard, it is still reasonable, how many Nigerians can afford that? Only few can afford that even if you are an armed robber, is it everyday you rob?

So, how will the poor survive?

It is war and revolutionary reaction that can solve the problem because the Federal Government has failed, they left the message and they are pursuing the messenger. The late Ken Saro Wiwa said that it is easier to kill the messenger, but the message is more important because it will go a long way.

Do you think revolutionary conflict is the best alternative to our problems?

The last century is the most turbulent in human history, there were series of civil wars and two world wars, they gave us terror, but they also produced good citizens. Those who made history in the last centuries were discovered during the wars. During a war, sometimes you get positive things, your level of reality will change, I am not saying I support war, but war also has its own positive side. The 1759 French revolution has its classical case of human rebellion, and it gave birth to parliamentary system of government and so many theories that we are using nowadays as legislators such as the separation of power, it is part of our development. I am not encouraging war, but it is part of a process that can facilitate development.

Let's talk about the amnesty programme of the Federal Government for Boko Haram members and a committee has been inaugurated for that, is amnesty the solution to the menace of Boko Haram?

It is not the solution, the committee is just a jamboree, it will not produce any result. I have said in some other interviews, Boko Haram members are not ghosts as the Federal Government is putting it. There is nothing like ghost workers also, they may be called ghost workers, but in the bank, they are not ghosts because they go there to collect their salaries, they are alive. Boko Haram members exist, the Federal Government knows how to deal with them if they are ready. We must not pretend as if they are taking any drastic step against them. All we are saying in Lagos is that we are going to safeguard the state even with our lives to ensure that the people of the state are protected.

So, what do you think is the way out of Boko Haram and the insecurity situation in the country then?

President Goodluck Jonathan knows what to do, he is pretending, if he is not capable of doing the right thing, let him leave the post and give other people opportunity to govern the country. He has failed in all its ramifications. He knows those who are behind it, they negotiate, they discuss, they have been meeting. This is not their first meeting, so we must not romanticize it as if they are abstract people, they are not, he knows them.

We are moving towards election and we are seeing mergers here and there and some people are saying that PDP still has more states in its control, do you see the opposition taking over in 2015?

Yes, in the sense it that Nigerians are now seeing that giving power to northerners or southerners does not matter, what we need are capable people, not necessarily those who have many degrees. I know the president has several degrees in zoology, he should have been confided into the zoo to take care of animals instead of running the affairs of men. The opposition are taking over, not through violent, but through a democratic means.

But some people are saying that the election would be violent, do you agree?

It is an insinuation; we will make sure that universal suffrage, which our party believes is allowed to operate, we will definitely win.

Are you satisfied with the level of legislation in the country as a whole, both states and the National Assembly?

To a reasonable extent, I am not yet satisfied, but we have just left Egypt, we are still going to Jerusalem, so we still have a long way to go. That is why we go for seminars often, we deliberate, we check and we examine countries that have been practicing democracy for about two centuries so that we can bring what they practice into our own country. What we are doing is part of the process, we are not working at a fast rate, but Lagos is the best in Nigeria and this has even been acknowledged outside the country. Despite that we still train; it is about education, which is a continuous process. I can assure you that by the quarter of next year or 2015, the quality of debate in the states and in the National Assembly would have improved considerably. It is not how it was in 1999 that we have it now, it is improving, it is a gradual process.

As a man of the people, what have you done to affect the lives of your people, and do you plan to be in the executive soon?

If I want money that is where I would go, but I want to work, and I come to my office here regularly, even when we are not sitting, to read books and write articles, which I send to media houses. We must differentiate growth from development, growth is in quantity, while development is in quality and it will reflect in my new article. I am always attending to the needs of my people and I give them feedback of what we do here regularly.

Talking about the 2015 election, some are agitating for permanent voters' cards, while some people are even saying we can use National Identity card, also do you think INEC is capable of conducting a credible election in 2015?

Well, to a reasonable extent, I am one of the students of the INEC Chairman, Professor Attahiru Jega, when he was the chairman of ASUU during the era of former president Ibrahim Babangida, I used to read a lot about him. So, I think with his own knowledge, he has been able to take INEC to a reasonable extent, at least for now, I'm not saying in totality. But what has spoilt did not get spoilt in a day; it is an accumulation of what the military regime did. I can assure you that Jega would not put his name in the mud.

On whether INEC should do a permanent voters' card or not does not really matter, we just need a formation of new man, we need to re-orientate Nigerians, our social values have collapsed, we need to re-build it, if we re-build it, every other thing will follow. The role of me as a legislator and you is to re-build our society; it will do us a lot of good than evil.

Sometimes, people don't understand the roles of legislators; they think you should tar roads, build schools and all that

Those are executive functions, it is a gradual process, executive is responsible for that. As a legislator, I relate with the people and one of it is to educate them that I was elected as a lawmaker and that my first assignment is to make laws and formulate policies for the state for the benefit of the masses, and any policy that will not benefit the people, one of which is the PPP projects, where the government money would be pumped and certain money would be collected from the people and we are not going to have a say in it. A good example is the Lekki-Epe Expressway toll gates; those who voted for us have been disturbing us that they don't know who advised the government to do that. I told the executive not to take us for granted.

June 11, 2013