[b][/b]Dr. Muiz Banire, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, is a man of many addresses. A law teacher, legal practitioner, politician and convener, United Action for Change, a political advocacy and leadership capacity building organisation. The erstwhile National Legal Adviser of the ruling All Progressives Congress is often viewed in certain quarters as controversial on account of his principled positions on issues. But in all, he is not bothered. Thus, in this interview with Olawale Olaleye and Olaseni Durojaiye, he holds nothing back as he dissects issues of political currency and sundry others. Excerpts:

You were hitherto the national legal adviser of the APC but your people from Lagos rose stoutly against you, till you were eventually pushed out. What was your experience like?
Nobody pushed me out. They couldn’t have pushed me out. I decided to leave, because I believed it was much more honourable to leave office, when the ovation was loudest. I am not sure of the statistics but to a large extent, I want to believe I was the longest serving national legal adviser of the party, because cumulatively, I spent seven and a half years in that office. To that extent, I feel it was honourable to leave, when I left.

Second, contrary to the impression that many people had, there was no benefit for me holding the position. Rather, I sacrificed not only financially, I also sacrificed my services and took a lot of risks on behalf of the party, so, why would one want to continue particularly, when some characters appeared not to appreciate my services. So, having contributed substantially to the development of the party, I can say with all sense of fairness and without any fear of contradiction that I was one of the people that midwifed the registration of the party to the glory of God.

And I had the honour of not only being the interim national legal adviser of the party but the first substantive national legal adviser of the party. By the time you consider all of these, you would want to tell yourself give others the chance to add value to the party.

In respect of my contributions while in office, the truth of the matter is that, in my view, my greatest contribution was the introduction of internal democracy into the party and ensuring substantial compliance. It was very tough and challenging. I have had to make enemies in the process but at the end of the day, today, it is gradually being entrenched in the party.

We must quickly acknowledge that all is still not well within the party but at least, we have moved from where we were before and hopefully, we will continue to move forward until we get to a situation, where it is satisfactory.
To the glory of God, that was my greatest achievement and the fact that I discharged my duties without fear or favour to anybody. That much all of them could say and I was happy that at no time did I get myself corrupted by anybody or institution. I took decisions professionally regardless of whose ox is gored and I believe that honestly speaking, I did well during my tenure.

Did you ever think that your own people would have moved against you?
Candidly, I would never have thought so, because I believed that whatever the differences we had, we should always do things rightly at all times. Then, also, there seems to be a lot of misconceptions regarding a whole lot of people, largely borne out of ignorance, such that disagreement to them means fight or conflict. Unknown to them, what is good for any institution is to disagree on issues particularly, on principles and that does not necessarily translate into having any personal grudges with anybody.

Except you have divergent views, you may not be able to grow a party in a healthy manner and bring the best out of the system. To this much, a lot of them didn’t appreciate. Sooner or later along the line, we had a lot of people who were not only sycophantic but because of their nature in terms of poverty, they were unable to think straight.
So, I believe that a lot of the time, their actions were not borne out of their own conviction, most of the time it was either out of poverty or ignorance and when people start educating them correctly, they start to appreciate the true position, because most of the time my fights was for them and not for me. It had nothing to do with me. If I had taken contrary positions, it would have been much more beneficial to me, but I believe that is not the ultimate thing in life.

The ultimate is when you are in such positions of value, protect the values. So, it was their battle that I was fighting, unfortunately, out of ignorance and poverty, they couldn’t appreciate it at the time. But, like I continually say, I bear no personal grudges with them. I have enjoyed it, because they have made me more popular locally, nationally and internationally. So, I am indebted to them in that regard.

Let’s flip that question. Do you think Asiwaju could have imagined that you of all people would have stood up to him?
Well, I must say that right from inception he appreciated my nature and tendency, even all the times – that we shared intimacy; that I had always stood up to him and tell him the truth and to that extent, he used to appreciate me until around 2014, that I started noticing that something was wrong – like there was a disconnect somewhere.
Before, even those who served in the cabinet with him will testify to this. We shot down so many of his policies; we shot down many of his ideas and he took them gladly without any form of bitterness or rancour against anybody and I continued with that tradition until around 2014, when I raised some issues about the candidature of the current governor of Lagos State, when I asked him to look at certain dynamics. Possibly Asiwaju was hijacked by other people, who poisoned his mind or convinced him to see it as an act of confrontation



But again, the duty that I owe him as a follower is not that of sycophancy; it is the ability to tell the person your own opinion objectively about any situation, so, I have no regrets about that. I am sure that throughout the time, and I still want to believe so that he knew I meant no harm. But I will always take a position that I believe is proper, irrespective of whose ox is gored. That was exactly what has happened and I still believe that if similar circumstances presented themselves again, I will still take the same position and I think he shouldn’t be surprised about that.

Unfortunately, the only area I feel a bit pained was that we needed not get to the level of personal enmity. Disagreements are bound to happen and I have always considered them as healthy and he used to encourage it too but I don’t know what has happened in recent time that has made him to be intolerant to our suggestions or disagreements on some issues. The only point of divergence is about this issue of internal democracy, nothing else.

I have always insisted on that and gladly enough, he has come to that realization. Again, all the people in the race are your children, give them equal opportunity and whoever emerges from the process would still acknowledge his leadership that much I know and all those that fall by the roadside are the ones that require your protection against the tyranny of the person that emerge. That’s all. That’s the way I view it.

It is curious to know that you were the first person to stand more or less against the current Governor of Lagos State, Akinwunmi Ambode. You stood against him in many respects. Why was this so? Was it that the two of you had certain connections not known to the public or could it be a case of animosity towards him? However, it would seem that some of what you feared would happen are beginning to unfold, what exactly did you see that made you uncomfortable with his choice?

In the first instance, I regard what we are experiencing in the state right now as a divine intervention in the interest of the state as a whole and that of politicians as well. Like you rightly said, I saw this right from inception but I was the lone voice that shouted several times but the party people never saw it. Rather, most of them castigated and harassed me and kept intimidating me, even victimised me. But of course, I was unrelenting, undaunted and resolute.

Now, God has suddenly opened their eyes to the reality and all of them have now taken the gauntlet and shouting ‘we’re fed up with the governor; we don’t want him again’. In the first instance, he has never been part of the political movement of this state or part of the governance system; he was at best an Accountant General.
He never dealt with the issues of policies, development and programmes with us. We dealt with such. It would have been best if somebody within that circle, who must have known where we left issues; people that we had dealt with; those to be sustained, those to be improved on and those to be jettisoned.



But somebody, who spent the larger part of his life at the council level and suddenly emerged at the state level as Accountant General now governing a state as complex as Lagos? Certainly, it would be challenging to him. I saw the picture and knew we were endangering ourselves generally and I drew the attention of everybody including Asiwaju to it then.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that we were not only coerced into working for him, which we all did. In fact, I used to boast that I was among the top five people that worked for him to get to where he is today, but what did we get in return? Of course, we are living witnesses to my own story.

Regardless, the reality is that once you get to that position, even the people that are highly cerebral will still be receptive to ideas and suggestions from others. But what about someone, who shuts his doors at other people and believes he’s the only one who can do things the way and manner he considers right? The result is what we are seeing today. Today, everybody has now seen including the general populace (not only the politicians) that we are all endangered except something is done. I thank God that I am vindicated at the end of the day.

But what do you think informs his now resentful disposition? Could it be lack of exposure especially, that you said he spent a major part of his life at the local government?

Well, exposure might be part of the reasons. It is not even about going to school alone. Like we used to joke, some people passed through the university but the university did not pass through them. Beyond that, the fact that you have a degree doesn’t mean you will make a good manager to start with.

Second, experience and exposure matter. You can never discount experience particularly in governance. My experience has shown me that if you bring any one from outside of the system to come and govern any state, he will still be struggling the first two years and by the third year, he will just be laying foundation and the next election is already around the corner.

Beyond that, again, the nature of the person also counts. As a leader, you must be receptive to everybody’s idea and you must be accessible. Once a leader is not accessible, he has already failed. People must be able to reach you; they must be able to interact with you; they must also be able to criticise you; you must be receptive to criticisms.

A leader that is not receptive has failed. Unfortunately, I think it is just his nature. He is just not receptive to others and there appears to be some measure of arrogance in him that will not allow him to share other people’s opinion. You can’t be right on all issues.

The fact that they call you ‘Your Excellency,’ does not mean you are excellent; it is just a glorification. He probably got the title of ‘His Excellency’ wrong to think he could do no wrong. It can’t be. The state does not belong to one person; we are all stakeholders in the state. Any policy that is introduced will affect us all in one way or the other, so when we voice out our opinion, why must you then persecute us, more so some of us are Lagosians of the first order?
A lot of people had done several analyses of him but I really don’t know what the problem is with him. Again, like I said earlier, you can never discount the issue of experience and exposure, which he lacks when it comes to the issue of governance.

As an insider, at what time did Asiwaju realise it was time to pull the plug on the governor’s second term bid?
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I honestly don’t know. What I know is that in the last four or five months, there has been a subtle evaluation of the administration, and I could tell from his body language and that of people around him that they were beginning to realise that they were in trouble.

By that time, they had begun to realise that if the governor was presented for a second term, the success of the party at the poll was endangered. Again, information reaching me shows that there have been some polls, which showed that there was a looming problem if the party went ahead to field the current governor in the polls.

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https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2018/09/23/muiz-banire-60-per-cent-of-nigerians-dont-know-why-they-vote/?amp

The San is Completely Tight on this!!

It's Ridiculous to see Citizens who have been subjected into Unfriendly environment and Leadership Voting the same people due to 10,000, 5000, 2000.

So, 10000/4yrs= 2500 per year.. which is less than $10 usd.

POVERTY OF THE MIND IS A BASTARD