Lagos: Arthur Mbanefo, a renowned Chartered Accountant and former Nigerian Permanent Representative to the United Nations, is not only regarded as an outstanding statesman whose views on economic and political issues are always taken seriously one of the busiest articlate minds in the country. For over four months Senior Correspondent DANIEL KANU made almost fruitless efforts to track him for an interview. But on Thursday it paid off.

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In the relaxed and cozy ambience of his Ikoyi home, Chief Mbanefo who has served as Pro-chancellor of several universities including Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, discussed incisively, from an informed background, several issues concerning Nigeria, Africa, the United Nations and the Obama presidency.

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Excerpts:Sir, Nigeria has celebrated 48 years, so far so what?

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Well, 48 years of independence for Nigeria. I think that by and large we have gone extremely far from what it was in 1960, when we achieved our independence. The expectations are high, but the achievements and the measure of those achievements is where we are lacking. The foundations upon which our forefathers actually laid down were disrupted obviously by the difficulties we had after barely six years which resulted in one of the worst wars in recent times. At the end of that war, many mistakes were made and, somehow, we have not been able to correct those mistakes.

Be it in terms of our relations amongst ourselves, be it in terms of having a nation totally and fully united with one course, we have, most unfortunately, tried to accentuate statism and ethnicity in place of unity, nationalism and more importantly patriotism. So, that is one the basic foundations: every other thing naturally will build from that.

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The economic advancement of Nigeria again over this 48 years have not matched, in any form or shape, the aspiration of the Nigerians basically because of the inability or the commitment of the leadership over the improper use of resources available to the nation. The result, naturally, is lack of appropriate infrastructure, in agriculture, in our healthcare, hospital and roads, etc., have unfortunately had to retrogress. But the way of life is founded in hope. One hopes that at some point in time there will be a very serious change of heart on the part of the leadership to make it possible for Nigeria to be reckoned with in the comity of other nations. We cannot really afford to keep beating our chest and say we are the most populous African nation. We need to march our hopes with reality; it is happening today in the Gulf region, in the Middle East, it is happening in Asia. It can also happen here. All we need is to put our acts together; we don't need people from the moon or from another planet to do it for us, we have to play down on issues that divide us and come back to things that are necessary for nation-building. We have lost out completely, as far as nation-building is concerned. We don't seem to understand what it is all about. We are not even close to what anybody can describe as a nation. The worst out of this is the result of the balkanisation of this country in the name of state creation. It has not facilitated development. Many of the states cannot sustain their own basic economies, they depend, at the end of the day, on Federal Government hand-outs and, even at that, they are not enough for most of them even to pay salaries, not to talk of the corruption that diverts most of those resources to non-productive areas that will not enhance the welfare of the people.

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I also believe that we need to really work together in the sense of knowing what the true roles the Federal Government should be and what the true roles of the state should be and the local governments. We also have to look at their development and see whether we need the type of presidential government we have now; whether we can afford it or whether we cannot afford it. And, I believe that with the experience that we have had this 48 years, we can, if we really want to, change what we are doing wrong. The change that is sweeping the world at the moment, I hope also will reach Nigeria. We need change , and we can do it peacefully and should do it peacefully. We need this change in leadership, at all levels, and we should be ready to be our brother's keeper.

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You said there is hope. Looking at the present government and its seven-point agenda; can we link the hope to it?

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The seven-point agenda of this administration is laudable, there is no question about it, but in it's implementation. It is the practice that is important. As somebody just observed the other day, and we know it also from experience, that campaigning or what people say to get elected into office often are not matched by action. When they start governing, so many constraints come in and the lack of preparation, etc.

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In the United States of America, for example, an election was held on the November 4, the election closed about midnight, on that same day and three to four hours after, the results were out. We are claiming to be 150 million people, the people who cast the votes that elected the president, that elected the governors, that elected the members of the Congress had over 220 million registered voters and the people who voted eventually, I understand, were almost 200 million and yet the results were out. It is something we should really look at. Secondly, the policies of the government had already been formulated in anticipation and this enabled Obama, next morning, to appoint his chief of staff. His cabinet, even though he has got six weeks in which to prepare himself for the seat, are already on ground. He's already gotten his team and his team is expected within the next one week. And so by the time he is sworn in on January 20, 2009, he will hit the ground running. Here it takes you, I don't know how long, to appoint ambassadors, and how long to appoint a cabinet. There are so many things that people need to do and these are the changes that we are talking about. It is not just having a brilliant seven-point agenda. Seven-point agenda is nothing, you can make it two point-agenda, or 100-point agenda - the issue is how prepared are you to really carry out and put up an action for people to see?

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Two years of this administration is about going, and the worst part of it is rather than getting better and achieving progress people are getting distracted. One of the seven-point agenda is the issue of the rule of law, and many are already feeling it's no longer tenable, if you want to do an assessment. You cannot say any of those points in the agenda has really taken off in any meaningful way. So, if you relate that to hope, the question will be: how do we assess the achievements of the seven-point agenda? How open is government? People are talking of transparency - that is openness - like Obama said in his acceptance speech: "I will be open to you and I will listen to you, particularly when we disagree". Now when you say you will be open to the people, it means you have to communicate with the people; it means you have to talk to the people. A situation where the people are allowed to guess what government is doing is really not good and should be avoided, because this is what creates speculations and what ultimately undermines government and governance, giving the security agents sometimes time to harass some innocent citizens. We need to inform people and not allow people just to sit down and imagine things that are not possible.

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You mentioned the issue of corruption - looking at the anti-corruption campaign through the EFCC, ICPC - could you say we are at the right track?

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I think the problem we equally have is that we ourselves use the word corruption without understanding what corruption really means, either in the ICPC or EFCC sense. EFCC is not strictly for corruption as such, it is expected to look at fraud and fraud is not necessarily corruption. ICPC specifically is for corruption, and corruption comes in various ways. It is not the multiplicity of agencies of governments that will address the problem of corruption. We do have the Special Branch of the Police that is investigating financial crimes and things like that. Now you have EFCC, between two of them, EFCC has so far been headed by senior police officers, and yet we do not see the easy co-ordination among their activities. A case may be before the EFCC and at the same time before the Special Branch of the Police and you get them dragging the people forward and backward, without getting anywhere. So the lack of co-ordination among these organs is a problem. And this is again because everybody who is in any form of authority tends to create the idea that he has something to pursue and that he is the one who has to show some degree of authority. We must begin to understand that the purpose of most of this agencies created by government is to achieve some results for the benefit of the society and, if they don't work together, if they don't seem to have the same objective and are more interested in either to fend for themselves power blocs, the ultimate result can only be chaos and unhealthy competition.

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Corruption should not only be associated with fraud, with crime and things like that, but it is part of it. Corruption is not only in stealing money; and the way we look at it we think that somebody is corrupt because you are stealing money, that is not the only practice that is corrupt. The way you receive people, the way you manipulate information to deprive people of genuine result is corruption. You can be morally corrupt, physically corrupt. The sins you commit can be in form of corruption. The way you behave can be corrupt.

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So, corrupt practices are enormous and one of the things that people need to do actually is to be able to explain to the public that corruption is not synonymous with bribery. They are not the same thing. We need to start removing corruption from our public life and the only way to do it is by starting from the grassroots, to teach the children from the kindergarten their civic responsibilities; their responsibilities to one another, responsibility to the nation as Nigerians, responsibility to their neighbours, etc. The fact that this is not being taught in schools, in the churches and things like that is the result of some of the things we are experiencing. Somebody who gives illicit drugs, for example; somebody who sells expired drugs, etc., they are corrupt people. Civic responsibility has to be imbibed. Civic responsibilities teach that there are proper ways of conduct and behaviours. As long as people are not able to do things properly, you are bound to have corruption.

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Do we expect a policy shift that will favour Africa from the Obama presidency?

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As far as I am concerned, the Obama phenomenon or the Obama story, one would say, is founded on hope and people will continue to live on hope that they will somehow benefit from his being elected as the 44th President of the United States, the most powerful country on earth. I personally do not believe that there is going to be a major shift simple because Obama is an African and, therefore, he is going to be partial to Africa. In the world today, irrespective of his Africanness, he is first an American and he is the leader of the Americans - not the leader of Africans - although by extension because of the position of his country, leader of the world. For us to think that he is going to single out Africa, and try to do things especially' for Africa may be far from the truth. To do something immediately, I think will be far fetched, but there is no reason why we cannot continue to hope that he would. The major thing facing Africa at the moment is again conflicts, some of the states that have collapsed, the war in the Congo, Darfur, Sudan. Somalia has become a forgotten failed state and with all the efforts that they are making for the world to hear them or their cry, many people have taken their eyes away from them. African leaders must have a constructive change or decision on most of the troubled parts of Africa as well as the major problem facing Africa which is poverty, hunger, shortage of food, inability of the people to have basic needs, clean water, health, a teeming population of vulnerable groups of children and women.

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Look at all the refugees, and the picture one sees: the greatest group suffering seems to be children and women. And somehow, I keep asking myself the question on where we are going from here, when you see the number of children under the age of 10.

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You know in this calamitous areas or Africa, it surprises me whether we do nothing but just make babies. Of course, in this age of massive reduction in infant mortality, etc., no doubt it does help to have more children around but, when you compare it to developed or even developing countries of Asia where tragedies happen, you don't see as many children under the age of 10. This really makes one wonder whether our leaders are watching this kind of things and trying to see how far it could be addressed.

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I don't think the American government will automatically delve into these issues for us; even if they will, they may not be in a position to do too much looking at their economic situation at this point in time. Their national debt, their government in total deficit, as well as their fighting two wars already and then the invisible war on terrorism. To my mind we should be realistic; to make sure that our hopes and our wishes would be marched with reality and, in that way, our disappointment will be containable.

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Let's look at Nigerians and the United Nations; it appears we have always been denied the permanent seat?

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Well. Let me make this correction, we have never been denied any seat in the UN. A lot of people don't understand this issue of a seat for Nigeria in expanded Security Council, we have already served in the Security Council as non-permanent member, a couple of times. We have even served as the President of the General Assembly, by Joe Garba who served in that capacity. That is a top post, so we have really not been denied anything. But the thing is that the world has changed. And when you see the UN organisations as an inter-governmental organisation. The 192 members are all governments non-governments cannot be members of the UN, that is the starting point. And in 1945 when the UN was set up, the very strong countries or the major allies of the World War II were the people who got permanent seats in the UN, and that was informed by the fact that the predecessor of the UN, which was the League of Nations, made it possible for all the members then and the result was that it was difficult to contain and achieve certain objectives that resulted in the second world war, 20 years more or less,1918 to 1939, for the second war to start. So, they decided that they themselves who were the people who invited the 51 countries that founded the United Nations should hold special power to make sure that no one country overrides the other and then cause problem, that is how the story of the permanent members came about; and then not only that they are permanent members, they were also given veto power to veto anything; they were given the authority and the mandate to be in charge of the collective security of the world.

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The collective security of the world, this is very important. And what they talk about in the Security Council is security. And what has happened, which was unfortunate, is that there had been abuses of this veto power and the way the Security Council has run it being more like a gentleman's club that is divided into two - a group called the P-members, the permanent members. They call them P5, and the rest, which are 15 non-permanent members that rotate every two years, to the rest of the nations. What we are saying is that with the way the world has gone, with the growth of the UN from 51 at inception to 192 today, that, that part of the UN should be democratised in the sense of expanding it and having other countries that contribute to world peace, security and financially to also seat on that side of this club. And so they had wanted Africa to be adequately represented, Latin America to be adequately represented, Asia to be adequately represented, etc, because what we do have at the moment is that we have Europe, America, and China. Europe has two members, Great Britain and France.

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Let's look at calls for constitution review!

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The last administration when they came in, the first thing they said was that they were going to review the military Constitution of 1999 and they spent eight years and didn't do anything. It is difficult to imagine that since Independence, we have reviewed our Constitution for God knows how many times. I don't think we should begin to excite Nigerians unnecessarily for political reasons. Review of the constitution normally will come from various angles; it comes from the administration that will want to streamline what is frustrating the progress of the country. The legislators see a way of doing that, and then the Judiciary also through their cases finds out some of the things that need to be changed.

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So, what you now have is a situation where there is no need for people to begin to talk about it. People that are engaged in working out the constitution are the people who understands the Constitution, it is not you and I that work the Constitution. There are agents that do that, they know what is frustrating the generality of the nation from going forward. It is from this group you select to work on the Constitution. We also need to look at the methods entrenched for the amendment of the Constitution. You don't just copy things from America or other places when we don't know how their own has evolved.

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The Constitution is supposed to be a document that is above many things, it's not something that you change every year; it is not something that every administration comes and they want to change.

I think people must begin to appreciate what a Constitution is. In the over 300 years of American Constitution, I think it is five or six amendments. The Charter of the UN has had, maybe, two amendments and that is 60 years. We think the constitution should have everything. It is not the same thing as a bill of right.

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Some critics believe Nigeria need a Sovereign National Conference from where a Constitution will emerge?

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I don't think that is necessary. The real thing to do is that to amend the constitution, get the basic framework. And I think we do have the basic framework. Now any aspect that needs to be amended, there are people that are going to work on it and then have a referendum. When you go and publicise these things, it is wrong. We cannot spend all our life changing constitution, it is not right. The technical people will do it and then we have a referendum and let people know whether they want the change or they don't want the change.

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Under Babangida, we had the Political Bureau, which again looked at a lot of these things and they had the foundation. Before that, there has been two reviews not forgetting Abacha's own. Even Venezuela, the other day, they had to go to referendum, as the president wants to tinker (with) the constitution, to gain more and more power. In Nigeria, you can take issues like the federation, resource control, land use decree, federal character, etc., and the experts will do it as the government takes a decision with the people. Why can't we trust some people who have experience, the technical people, to do what needs to be done and then they will come back to us, and we have a referendum? The first Constitution we had, even before independence, it was not the whole country that went to the Lancaster House and worked out a constitution for us.

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When Nelson Mandela came out of prison they had to sit down to work out their constitution. It wasn't the whole people. It is a technical document. You need the experts, and then the people will go out and vote for it.

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Igbo leadership has had a problem!

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I think the problem is that, according to a saying that those who do not appreciate history are bound to repeat it. When we look at the issue of the Igbo nation; there are certain basic things that we need to understand. That even in our languages, which we say this is the Igbo language, are different in major ways. Consequently our histories are different. It is, therefore, necessary for us to decide what it is that will unite us, what is it that is common to us and use that as a platform. For me, what is most important for Ndigbo today is a platform, where they can organise themselves, to be able to live with the rest of Nigerians in this space called Nigeria.