After almost 18 years of being kidnapped and forcefully deported from Nigeria to the United Kingdom in 1988 by the military regime of General Ibrahim Babangida, Jamaica-born fiery writer-activist and former academic at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Dr. Patrick Wilmot returned to Nigeria last week. He said he came back to remind the civil society that no one could afford to remain docile, particularly now. He spoke to ALABI WILLIAMS. BEFORE you were deported, did you have any premonitions? At that time, I was getting a lot of death threats. They were always watching my house and my office. They would wait until I left the house, then they would call and speak with my wife who is a Nigerian. She had decided a long time ago to leave this country because first, she didn't think the people here were serious. And secondly, the people, who controlled the country at the time, did not like what I was doing or saying. Basically, they had no interest in really developing this country.
I didn't expect they would actually abduct me and drive me from Zaria to Lagos in the night. I didn't know who they were. I thought they were armed robbers and would kill me. I thought they would kill me along the Zaria-Kaduna road and dump me. It was one of my colleagues of the Political Science Department - a good friend of Babangida, Abacha and that whole crowd - who came to my house and said he wanted to use my phone. Later, he asked me to drop him at the Zaria Club. He did not drink because he had an accident sometime ago. I wondered why he wanted me to take him to the club and I told him, "I can't take you right now because I'm preparing to go out tomorrow at 4am to Owerri, to represent the university at some graduation. But later, I told him I would come to his house and pick him to the Zaria Club. I went to pick him and we stayed there a short time. When we were going, I got into my car and started driving. Then four Peugeot 504 station wagon vehicles, brand new, surrounded us. Some of the people were armed and I had no idea who they were. It was this friend of mine, who said I should open the door because they were going to break the window. I said, "who cared if they break the window; I don't know who they are; may be they are going to kill us." He said, no no, open the door! And then, he opened the door. They dragged me out and put on me some handcuff. Did your friend recognise who they were? He must have known who they were. Otherwise, he wouldn't have opened the door. If they were armed robbers, why open the door? They could smash the window as they liked and I would try to get away. Did you suspect foul play on the part of your friend? At first, I thought they were going to kill me and if they were going to kill me, then they would have to kill him, too. What they did was that, they took him straight back to his house and he left first thing in the morning. So, he was there specifically to get me into a position where they could kidnap me. My own colleague! Do you still call him, a friend? Not at all! He never contacted my wife; he never contacted me. In 18 years, I have never heard from him. If he were not involved, there was no way those people would have allowed him to go back to his house. Their fear was that if students learned I was being kidnapped, the whole place would be uncontrollable but if they let him go, the way they did, it means that he was in it. Looking back at the time, what actually motivated you to do and say the things that irritated government? At Yale (University, United States), I was a classmate of John Kerry, the man who ran for president of America (in 2004). I was two years ahead of (President) George Bush. I was much more intelligent than Kerry. My IQ was twice that of George Bush. I went to Yale University where (former President) Bill Clinton went; Hillary Clinton went there; George Bush senior attended Yale; Gerald Ford went there, too. That was the school for people who climbed to the top level of government. The point is this. If I had wanted to be a powerful person with prominence in the world, or to make a lot of money, I would stay in the United States. I never tried to get my student visa changed; I never tried to become a citizen of the US; I never tried to live in the US. I said, look I want to come to Africa, and I want to come to Nigeria because I thought Nigeria had the possibility of becoming a great country, and that would transform the whole of Africa. But I saw that the leadership, except for General Murtala Muhammed, was for a brief period without ambition. It was without vision, it was without intelligence, it was without competence, it was without integrity. People were not going into government to transform the Nigerian economy or to benefit the ordinary Nigerians. They were in government for one purpose only: to control power and to use that power to steal. They take the money outside Nigeria and put it into banks and institutions. This is totally opposed to every other nation in history of the world. In a normal nation, corrupt, powerful brutal leaders go out and plunder other countries and bring it back into their own country. African leaders do the opposite. They plunder their own people, massacre their own people and put it (money) in other countries. I wanted Nigeria to develop and get to the level of America or Britain. And it has the resources, human resources. Nigeria has some of the most clever people in the world. Everywhere I go, I see Nigerians occupying positions in business. I was in the Caribbean and South Africa recently and I saw Nigerians. I met some of my friends who were teaching in Nigeria. I go to the United States, Nigerians are occupying credible positions in computer firms, business, science and industry. If Nigerians are so good outside, why are they so bad at home? Is it the effect of colonialism? You have a fairly good government in South Africa. They are making mistakes and there are still too many people who are poor and a few are getting richer. That's a mistake. But it is a fairly good government. I went to South Africa almost two years ago, I talked to Thabo Mbeki and his wife. They were making mistakes but they were not stealing. Thabo Mbeki's wife behaves just like a simple housewife. She came to the conference and was sitting somewhere at the back. When I saw Thabo himself, we talked just like we used to talk in Nigeria when he was the head of the ANC. His suit was not very expensive. I saw his hair cut, may be his wife did it for him; it was not very smooth. And I thought about Mobutu. Mobutu used to fly a barber from New York to Kinshasa every two weeks in a chartered Concorde, to cut African hair that is not a problem to dress. Can you imagine what it costs to charter a Concorde from New York to cut an African hair? He got the top designers in Europe to take chartered Concorde to Kinshasa to cut his clothes. And here was Thabo, his hair was cut not even as neat as yours (the reporter's). So what makes the difference between good and bad leaders in Africa? If you are a serious leader, you do what good leaders do. You concentrate on the problems of your people, and you make sure that your institutions are created to benefit the poorest and the weakest of your society. My conception of a State is one that protects the weak. The conception of a State in most African countries is how to make the leaders more powerful and how not to be accountable. The last time you had such leaders in the world was when you had absolute monarchs in Europe, like Loius XIV who said, "I am the State." You could say that to any African leader. Of course, we had good leaders like Nelson Mandela, Julius Nyerere. What these people have in common is humility. Nyerere was a simple man. When he died, he had a little farm, after so many years in office. I had met the man, and he dressed simpler than I did. I am not a fancy dresser but Nyerere was simple. You look at African leaders that steal billions... what are they going to do with it? Given, in Nigeria we had good leaders. Take Murtala Muhammed. Before he became Head of State, he got rid of a lot of property he had. He said he did not want his own property to conflict with his serving Nigeria. They got rid of him. He was killed after six months and he didn't steal anything while he was in office. The Sardauna died; he was in debt. Awolowo died, he left money but he made that money out of business and his practice as a lawyer not out of stealing money. He ran the Civil War finances with cocoa, cotton and groundnuts. There was no debt at the end of the war. There was credit because these people were not thieves. Even Gowon, when he was thrown out, he didn't have a house. But look at the other leaders and ask them what they did with the money when they had it. So, how does Nigeria re-invent those good old days? First thing, you have to have people who are selfless, people who listen and get advice, not those who think they are the wisest in the world. You need people who are clean. You must find a way to prevent people who are thieves from coming to office; and while they are in office, prevent them from ever stealing. Some people say that one of the immediate problems in Nigeria is the inability to define appropriate federalism. Do you agree with that? There is absolutely no problem with federalism. If you go to the university, you find that young people are marrying one another regardless of where they come from and their religion. Even these people, who are talking about North or South, their wives are from different religions and different ethnic groups. Nigeria on the social level is completely federal and completely integrated. You have federalism in the bedrooms; that is a good place to start. If you find leaders talk about marginalisation and regionalism or ethnicity, let them know that the only people marginalised in Nigeria are the poor people: Those poor women in the market, street children and cripples.
How can you say that somebody is marginalised in Bayelsa State when he has houses in London that cost millions of pounds and he wears a watch that costs hundreds of thousands of pound. He has so much money he does not know what to do with it. Is that person marginalised? It is the ordinary people suffering from pollution who are marginalised. So, you must conceive of Nigeria in terms of the people, not in terms of some regional leaders. Power shift for what? If you want power shift in Nigeria, shift the power to the people of Nigeria. We should think in terms of Nigeria as a 21st Century State and people should stop formulating nonsense. People like you - journalists - your duty is to stop writing rubbish and formulating perspective. You should concentrate on the problem of Nigeria as a 21st Century State. You do not see any problem with the way Nigeria operates federalism and the way it is practised in the United States? America and Nigeria are two different countries; the institutions are different. The Chinese would never say they are going to adopt the American or the British Constitution. They have been around for 2,500 years; they have a united State longer than many others do. When the South Africans were going to write a Constitution, they didn't consult anybody. They only did what they thought was to the benefit of South African people. If Nigeria wants a proper Constitution; they must have a Constitution based on the rights of the Nigerian people to control and hold accountable those whom they want to rule them. You want to be in the 21st Century, you need to let the people control whatever you do. In Haiti, Liberia and elsewhere, there has been problem of leadership. Is it a Blackman's curse? What's happening in Haiti is completely different from what's happening in Barbados, Trinidad, Jamaica and the rest. But bad government is not an African thing at all. America has bad government, but it is one of the richest countries in the world. If you are a rich man, you can afford to have an accident in your car, you probably have nine other cars, but if you are a poor man and you knock your bicycle, that is it and you can't go to work. So, our problem is poverty. Yes, as long as you remain poor, you have problems. That is what the Chinese, Indians and Malaysians have found. Nigeria and Brazil started military industry at the same time. But what are they manufacturing today at the Nigerian Defence Industry? Furniture! Brazil has been manufacturing military aircraft for more than 20 years. Yet they started exactly the same time with Nigeria. Malaysia imported palm oil (and seedlings) from Nigeria. They now export palm oil all over the world. I don't know if a palm oil industry exists any more in Nigeria. So, leadership is important. Some people also blame Western institutions like the IMF and World Bank for impoverishing African countries. China was worse off than Africa. There used to be signs in Shanghai saying, "no dogs or Chinese." The dogs were put before the Chinese. Which means they had more value for the dogs than for the Chinese. Today, China is destroying all the industries of the West. Thousands of ships go to China empty and bring back sophisticated, manufactured goods. That is part of the syndrome of African societies over the years: that Western imperialism was exporting manufactured goods and taking out raw materials. Now, China is importing raw materials and exporting industrial goods even to America and Western Europe. There is no reason why you can't do it here in Nigeria. But you got to change the leadership. But how much time do we have? Between the 1999 and now, people are still expecting a lot of changes? Basically, (President) Obasanjo is trying to undo the problems that were created by his predecessors. However, the way to do it is to mobilise the people. Unfortunately, Obasanjo is not a people's President; he cannot reach out to the ordinary people. He cannot identify or feel compassion for the ordinary people. So, he remains up there, with these characters trying to close up this one, fire that one. That is good; he is reversing the tide. But the problems you have in Nigeria are so colossal that you must get 150 million people behind you, isolate the few hundred thousands that are thieves and do whatever is necessary to them. Still, how much time do you think Nigeria has left because of fear of the unknown? The military at the moment is so discredited that I don't think they can return in the foreseeable future. But given the cynicism in the Nigerian leadership, if the elections next year are so hopelessly overturned, if those people who are in power now have enough intelligence, they would listen to what I am telling them now. Because there had been Rawlings, there had been Samuel Does. If such people are allowed to come into Nigeria, it would be a hundred times worse because Nigeria is a hundred times bigger than those countries. I am telling them now: that if they think they can run away from here to come and live in their houses in England, they should forget about it because I am putting pressure on the British government not to allow such people to come there. I am a British citizen; I have a British passport. I applied for a Nigerian passport for 18 yeas and I didn't get it. I applied for the British passport and I got it in five years. As a British citizen, I do not want my country to rescue thieves, who have pushed their countries to the brink. So, if they think they can just mess up Nigeria and run to England, I will mobilise the Nigerian population to drive them out should the British government allow them. I want Nigeria to have a rule of law. Time is running out and next year's elections are crucial. If they mess up they will be on their own. One of the things I am here to tell the people is that they should not sit back and say, 'I'm not a politician.' You've got to take an interest in the affairs of your country. That is your primary responsibility. Nigerians, who suffer bad roads, poor electricity, are the ones who must fight. It is their right.? - Culled from the Guardian Newspapers of Nigeria
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