Sir Laniwun Ajayi, a legal luminary and a core Awoist, was at the Ikenne home of Awolowos for the Obafemi Awolowo Foundation (OAF) Special Dialogue lecture last week. He spoke, in this interview, on different national issues especially the ones that always make him shed tears. Excerpts:

While speaking, you made some remarks which were quite inspiring but at a point, you shed tears. What did you think about that led to that sir?
Well, the beautiful things that the people said about Chief Obafemi Awolowo and the ugly things that are happening in Nigeria today, there appears to be very little hope unless we do the proper thing, which is true and fiscal federalism.

During your remarks, you referred to Nigeria as a failed nation, what do you mean by that sir?
Nigeria cannot do most of the things that a country can do; one, we import food up to the value of three trillion naira in a year. We are an agricultural country but we still import food. Two, we are an oil-producing country but with all the money, we have no roads; our education is in a deplorable state, our children have no access to good schools, in most cases the teachers are terrible. We have no shipping line, no airline, and no railway despite having been a sovereign state for over 50 years; all these things point to the fact that the nation has failed.

You equally made mention of the rancour and the rot in the legal profession, especially the one affecting the Chief Justice of the Federation and the Appeal Court president. What is your view about the rot and what is the way out?
They ought to have resigned because they were accused of unethical behaviour. They should have resigned but they have no self-respect.

What remedy would you recommend in order to cleanse the judiciary of the perceived rot?
We have no country, if we do have a country, some people should have moved against them and force the government to dismiss them.

Speaking about the failure of the country, the issue of legislators’ huge allowances has generated hues and cries in the country. If you are to advise, like how much would recommend for a member of the National Assembly as monthly take-home package?
National Assembly members should only be given sitting allowance depending upon what the experts will advise. In those days when people were serving as lawmakers, they were only paid sitting allowances, even if they were going to get more than that, it should be something reasonable.

People are calling for the merging of the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

What is your take on this?
Terrible! It is not people; it is the Attorney-General of the Federation because he wants power. He wants to make the EFCC and ICPC absolutely impotent, he wants to be able to direct them here and there and allow corruption to continue to thrive. That’s all.

You said members of the cabinet of President Jonathan are lacking the required fire and solution to Nigeria’s problem. How do you mean?
They cannot make Nigeria great and in any case, they are too many; ministers, ministers of state, advisers, why? The best thing that can happen to Nigeria is to learn from what happened to Yugoslavia. It consisted of many countries that were multi-lingual, multi-cultural and so on and of course, they wanted everyone to be on his own but the leaders, particularly Tito, did not allow that to happen. Tito died and the crises erupted, for 10 years they were killing one another

If we are not careful, we are going to go that way unless they listen to us, let us sit down and have true and fiscal federalism.

Boko Haram is the latest headache for the country, how do you think the menace can be curtailed?
We have defence and we have the police but they are terribly weak; maybe they are taking bribes from the Boko Haram people. That is the state of things.