Dialogue with Boko Haram is inevitable – Senator Ojudu

Senator Femi Ojudu, a journalist, represents Ekiti Central Senatorial District in the Senate. He spoke to Sunday Vanguard in his Abuja office on several national issues.

When you wake up in the morning and you look at the Nigerian situation, what comes to your mind?

What comes to my mind is that things could be better and ought to have been better if we have taken Nigeria seriously.

How do you mean taking Nigeria seriously?
I have a feeling that those of us who are leaders have not taken Nigeria seriously and there is a need for us to do so, quickly, before things got out of hand. There are so many problems that need to be solved quickly. And I look at the environment and see most of our people moving around without hope; that does not portend a society that will create a future. Today, the young ones do not even have any compass as to where they are going, and we are not assisting them to know. So, how do we have a future that is going to be better than today?

When you have a problem and you have a solution, you are happy that things will get better. But we have so many problems today and nobody seems to be addressing them or, do I say, they are not being addressed seriously. There is no hope for a better future if we continue this way.

When one observes the Nigerian situation so well, it is possible to see a disconnect between the leadership and followership, which makes it difficult for anybody to want to believe that there is any good leader left in the country. What is the problem with Nigeria and the leaders?

It is true that there is a gulf between the leaders and the led. And this is due to the fact that the masses lost hope in the leaders. Anybody in the position of authority, either at the executive, legislative or the judicial level, is seen as a thief. And why it is so is that the people have been betrayed over the years by the leadership. You believe in somebody and you sing his praise to high heavens, he gets to the position of power and he begins to do things contrary to what you have known him to profess. Under no circumstance would you then believe in such person again. So, we need to work very hard to return that credibility into the person because if you are not trusted by those that you are leading, there is no way they would follow you. We must work hard to return that credibility.

You were one of those who had it rough under military regime.  But given our current experience under civil rule, some people have been tempted to say things can be better under the military.  What do you think?

Under no circumstance would I glorify military regime. I believe that what we have today, as unfortunate as it may seem, is much better than the military. Again, we have to be cognizant of history. How did we get to where we are? History will show you that we were brought to where we are today by the military. The few years that we had civil rule before and after independence showed the giant strides the country made. Suddenly there was military intervention till 1979 when soldiers handed over power briefly and they came back again up till 1999.  So, all of the things you are seeing today are symptoms that came into being when we were under the military. Therefore, glorifying the military is not going to help.