In a local conflict, there is nobody who is right and nobody who is wrong. In Jos, one side talks about its traditional, cultural and customary rights, and the other side says: 'these are our democratic rights, we are Nigerians, this is our country, we are not in a foreign country. They are both right because we have a system, which acknowledges both rights. We don't just acknowledge culture as culture, we seem to acknowledge culture as the basis of political rights, and that is what the British brought in. So, it is not a question of right and wrong, it is a question of changing the rules of the game, and that is why I have said it is a more serious problem.
It is a chicken and egg argument; (Karl) Marx once asked a great question; who is to educate the educator? Who is to reform the system? Where will this elite come from when our entire experience has been that every opposition that joined in the critique of government displays the same character of the previous government when it becomes government? So, what do you change first? You will have to take advantage of the fact that political aspirants are in the opposition, and introduce new rules, so that when they get to government, they can be held accountable by this different set of rules or they are held accountable for implementing the different set of rules. You can't wait for the right people to be in power because the right people will never be in power; nobody will stay right under these rules. Of course, there has to be some leadership, but you can't count on it. Unless institutions are supportive of a particular kind of leadership, the leadership will not survive institutions.
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