My relationship with Tinubu in exile -Ladoja Between 1999 till date, a lot of things have happened in the polity. Nigerians had high expectations. They were expecting ‘miracles’ so to speak, to happen. But… They were not expecting miracles; they were expecting performance. They know that giving them electricity, good roads is not expected to be a miracle. Nigerians expected government to work hard and make life more abundant for them. Have we been able to achieve those lofty goals? Not yet and a lot of reasons are responsible. In 1999, we started this political experiment again. We are not yet where we ought to be. It is not that we have not made any progress; we have made some progress. Some people say the development we claim has occurred does not trickle down to the people at the grass root and who are in the majority… (Cuts in) What is development if it does not trickle down to the grass roots? Some argue this is because the governors do not allow the councils in their states to function by appropriating their share of federally collected allocation. When we talk about development, we are looking at issues that border on whether the roads are what we expect them to be. Industries are closing down because there is no infrastructure. Most companies have moved to Ghana because we do not have stable electricity. If the roads are good, are they not for both the poor and the rich? If the railway works effectively, will it not make movement of goods faster and cheaper? Is it not for the benefit of every Nigerian that these things should work effectively and efficiently? The issue you raised about the councils in the country is another thing entirely. Everybody has got his role. In principle, there are supposed to be federal, state and council roads. If we do the federal and state roads, then we will know where the problem is. The Lagos-Ibadan Expressway is supposed to be the premier road in the country. Premier in term of importance and If you leave the port of Lagos and are going to the East or the North, there is no way you will not ply that road. The councils are not working because many people see democracy as for chop chop. Many council chairmen, I am sure if you ask them, do not even read the constitution to know the powers that they have. They are, of course, supposed to be supervised by the state governments because the Supreme Court recognises the state as a federating body. As we march along, we will be correcting our mistakes. But most of the times, we do not give ourselves enough time to understand what we are doing before we rush to amend the constitution. If there is any problem, we blame the constitution and call for amendment. I use myself as an example. We are now wiser on impeachment than before. If we did not take the matter to court (his impeachment which was later revised by the Supreme Court in 2005), we would have still be thinking that you can suspend 50 per cent of the House of Assembly members and then get impeached by two-thirds of 50 per cent. We have to learn and these things and understand them before we rush to amend the constitution. You referred to the state as a federating unit. Does it mean you are against the move to grant autonomy to the councils? Have you ever been to the councils? Do you think that the people in the councils today can frankly speaking manage the councils without supervision? They cannot? Why? I said this because of the quality of the people that we have there. You started by asking me about why I am in politics and I said I am into politics for service to humanity. Many of the people in the councils today see the local government as an avenue for business and something to live on. If we are really going to properly structure ourselves, the councils should be supervised for some time and then allow them to run on their own. As governor, I knew the kind of autonomy I gave the council chairmen. No other governor has given councils that kind of autonomy in the country. We conducted election as soon as we got into office. We constituted the State Independent Electoral Commission within two months of our assumption of office and the body gave the normal notices and the election was conducted. The records are there and you can ask the then chairmen. We were transparent with them. When they told us about their projects, the ministry of local government approved. I remember one instance when they said they wanted to buy graders and we asked them, does the Ibadan North Local Government need graders? This means that they still need some guidance. Others bought but we didn’t allow those that would not need the graders buy the equipment. Did they require, in the first place, your consent for them to get things done in their councils? Yes and this is why we have the ministry of local government to which they submitted their budgets and we looked at them. So, we gave them limited autonomy. Why is corruption so endemic in Nigeria? There is no place in the world where there is no corruption. It is just the degree that is alarming here. It was not like that before the military came. So, the military contributed enormously to the high rate of corruption. And not only that, the civil service before the late General Murtala Mohammed was a civil service that was helpful to the society. But since the Murtala purge, the civil service has lost its flavour. During the Murtala era, a permanent secretary knew he would retire some time and was therefore planning his cottage home wherein he would stay on retirement to his village. But with the purge of Murtala, the top echelon of the civil service was removed and this removal left a huge vacuum that encouraged the promotion of mediocrity because of the way the service is structured. If you remove number one, two three and even four, and you now pushed people up to fill the vacuum. This is wrong. People move up the ladder progressively after they have acquired much experience. The civil service of old was sort of protected from the whims and caprices of the temporary officer holders. There were so many experiments done at that time that virtually destroyed the service. But what about cases of corruption involving elected political officers, particularly governors. Why is it so rampant among them? So far, I do not know why it is rampant because I do not know how they got to the position. A governor is not supposed to sign a cheque; he is not the Accountant General and the finance commissioner. I don’t really know how it is easy for them to steal the money. I don’t know. I am surprised when I hear this governor has stolen this much and so on. Are you not trying to shy away from the issue(corruption) because you were once dragged before the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission? The man who brought the charge told me later that he wanted to taint me because I was Mr. Clean and that he wanted to show the world that I was not clean and therefore, he just had to do something. He said he did so because he made overtures to me during his reign between 2007 and 20111 and that I was not yielding, I was not supporting him. So, he had to find something to hang on my neck. The case is still in court and so I may not be able to comment on it. Don’t you think the lifestyle of most of these former governors lend credence to the suspicion of allegations that a lot of them are indeed corrupt.… (cuts in) I quite agree with you. There is a limit to the amount of money a governor can earn during his four-year tenure. If you add up everything, maybe, it comes to N50 million. The salary of a governor is not much. But these days you see governors living in mansions of N300 million. We should ask where such governors got the money from. This house where you are interviewing me is where I lived when I was governor and is still where I am leaving now. I still make bold to say that during my period as governor, I did not put one block on another. I also did not buy new cars because the state provided everything I needed. I think this is where our anti-corruption agencies must come in. They must question governors and other public officers who live above their means. We need to build strong, functional institutions and strong personalities in this country. Once the Inspector General of Police [IG] is proclaimed an IG, he should know he has sworn to an oath and he is above anybody in the policing business. It is true that he has to listen to Mr President but he must also be bold enough to say sorry ‘sir, that is not the way things are supposed to be.’ But that is an example of where we believe individuals must be stronger than institutions. If the anti-corruption agencies are what they are supposed to be, I mean they know what to do, they will ask people questions. One of the areas said to be the conduit pipes for public funds, is security vote which is not accounted for anyway. Could you tell us how much you collected as security vote during your time? We didn’t appropriate much as security vote during out time. At times, we would not spend a kobo for months on security. Actually we spent about N2 to N3 million as security vote in a month. The misinformation that I was appropriating N60 million remains a fallacy till today. Our appropriation budgets are in the archives for people to check and see. It is there in the appropriation. Security vote for me is something that we should be able to account for. In spite of the security challenge we had at that time, not much was spent as security vote. Now, people are talking about Security Trust Fund and maybe this will help accountability on money spent on security. Do you support that it should be scrapped then? No, it should not be scrapped. What is security vote? When we took power in 2003, we had a deluge of robbers operating in the state. We had to call on the Federal Government to help us and they sent us additional units of mobile policemen which they said we should be responsible for. That is the kind of thing that the money is spent on. They say the money should also be used to gather intelligence and information. Which information are u gathering since the State Security Service (SSS) in not under you as a governor, police is not under you. Security vote is to meet emergency security challenges but that does not mean governors should not be able to write it down how such money is spent. You were one of the leading lights in the defunct Social Democratic Party [SDP]. Many have said by nature, since the preponderance of politicians in SDP is now in the progressive camp, you will be with them but.. (cuts in) What is progressive politics? Tell me. Is there any difference between the manifesto of the ACN and that of the PDP? We just use words that are meaningless in today’s political discourse and arithmetic. Gone are the days of capitalists, communists and so on. Everybody is now practicing welfarism because if you practice extreme capitalism and your neighbour is hungry, you wont sleep with two eyes closed. His noise won’t allow you to sleep. But if you take some care of him and he is able to feed and clothe and shelter himself, then he doesn’t even see you. And his children are able to go to school, then he will have hope that his children will later become great in life and be far better than him. Forget about the nonsense these people call progressive. Who are the progressives? You have them in the Action Congress of Nigeria [ACN] and other parties that have decided to form a merger party? What makes them more progressive than the PDP? Tell me. Many of them were not even alive when Chief Obafemi Awolowo was ruling. They are just repeating what people have told them. Is it the progressives of Pa Abraham Adesanya and late Chief Michael Ajasin that we have today in Bola Tinubu and Co? Please, spare us those appellations because they are not applicable now. Go back to the constitution of the three leading parties in 1999- PDP, AD and APP and you will see no difference. All of them talk about free education and health. It is a question your belief and who is in charge. I was a strong member of NADECO but the people that hijacked the Abiola for NADECO were not even in the SDP. They were playing siddon look. But no sooner the thing came, they jumped on it. Of course, I still believe if there any reason that I have anything to do with any group, once our ideas on that thing are the same, of course we can work together. So, that was why you had to work with them in NADECO? With who? We were the ones who fought for Chief MKO Abiola to win the election so it was just normal for us to continue to defend the mandate. They just came to us to hijack it. That could be because they perhaps had more money to oil the struggle? They didn’t have any money. They just added noise. They made us believe they funded the campaign. Tinubu was a Senator under SDP as I was. We know ourselves. We are talking of what happened after the annulment of the June 12 election.People who knew better at that time knew the pocket of every one of them. By the grace of God, Abiola knew who contributed to his success and continued to contribute towards his freedom. Some said you came out of that June 12 campaign richer. Which crusade are you talking about when I went on exile for nearly three years? I was in exile with Tinubu. Go and ask him. Ask him what role each person played at that time. I was on exile with Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, General Alani Akinriande, Commodore Dan Suleiman, Hon. Wale Oshun and others. We came out richer? When you spend money on politics, you are spending money that you can forgo. And those of us who were in exile during NADECO knew what each person’s pocket weighed. Tinubu was in my office in London at least twice a week because I had a functioning office in London at that time. So, what are you talking about? So, naturally therefore, you should be in the same camp. If you were in Ibadan or Oyo State at the time we came back from exile, you would have known that I was wooed to come to AD. But the problem there was that I saw through the smokescreen that they only professed to be Awolowo’s disciples but they were not really Awolowo’s followers because Awo never told a lie. Then, their mantra was that the Yoruba had suffered so much indignation and that if they were not allowed to rule, the Yoruba would secede from the country. I then asked some of their leaders if they were really serious about the secession threat. He said Rashidi you don’t know politics. Tell the people what they want to hear and when you get to power, you can do whatever you like and not what you told them initially. That is what these people you mentioned call progressive politics. Tell them what they want to hear so that you can get their votes. I told them they would incur the people’s wrath if three months after secession they didn’t have money to pay the workers and pupils couldn’t go to school. What is binding us together in this country is oil. So, I said, why are you not telling the people the truth? This is why I will never go to a place where there is a lot of deceit. Then, is this responsible for your decision to gang up, as you have been alleged, with your former deputy against the ruling ACN in Oyo State? In every party, there are good and bad. When bad people get to power, they misuse it and the party becomes bad. The PDP that we founded is not the same PDP that they have now. We founded a PDP that was straightforward and in which people had equal chances. But now, they shift goal post in the middle of the game, depending on what they want to achieve. Some people believe the Accord Party is working for President Goodluck Jonathan towards winning the 2015 presidential election. How true is this? Ladoja and Accord will never work for anybody. Ladoja does not need to work for Jonathan because we have moved out of his party, the PDP. At a point they tried to bring me back but it didn’t work because we did not agree on the terms for such return. Maybe, it is you that are saying that. You remember that I talked about the need for a third force in the South-West . We are going to form a potent third force that will challenge the ACN and the PDP. That is what it means. So if anybody is now saying we are for Jonathan, that is not true. When this third force emerges fully before the 2015 elections, it is not going to be a stooge of anybody. God has not made me like that. God has blessed me so much that He wants me to be independent and I am independent. I don’t believe I must be a satellite of anybody. You must be impressed by the kind of transformation that is happening in Oyo State. What is your stance on this? I have made my stance known. I said it that nobody is disputing that Ibadan needed a facelift. What we do not subscribe to is the lack of human face in the policy of the government. Even the facelift that we talk about should be gradual. During out time, we did the Mokola-UI-Ojoo Road, Iwo Road-Olodo Road and many others. Government is continuous. We said there were going to be 30 pupils per class in our schools. Didn’t we do it? There is nothing special in what Governor Abiola Ajimobi doing. We are only telling him to put a human face to his policies. Governance is not rocket science; it has been done before. When the late Bola Ige wanted to remove the traders from Gbagi area, he constructed the new Gbagi Market. When they wanted to remove traders from Dugbe, they constructed Alesinloye Market. This means they took into consideration that these small-scale traders must continue to earn their living. Given the relative success of Governor Ajimobi in the state so far, coupled with the fact that no responsible coach changes a winning team, won’t you subscribe to the view that he should come back in 2015? Who is marking him? You said given his relative success. Relative to what? All the roads he has expanded and constructed are not as long as Iwo Road-Olodo Road, Mokola-UI-Ojoo and we also started the one from Challenge to Owode Road. And go and measure these roads and compare them with what he claims to be doing. May be we can talk about the relative pains he inflicted on the populace, rather than the relative success you talked about. It has been argued that your alliance with Chief Alao-Akala is for selfish motive because it came after there was a rupture in the relationship between you and Ajimobi. We didn’t talk to Alao-Akala; he talked to us. He asked me if we could work together and I said why not if our views are the same. If he feels that I have a superior position and he approached me, will I say he should not come and join me? Up till now, we are still at the negotiation level. We formed a committee and they are working on this. Let’s wait for the outcome of the committee’s report. When Ajimobi approached us that we should work together, didn’t we help him? Were we the ones who broke the agreement? Was he not the one who did? And did the alliance say we are going to fuse into his party? Did the alliance say that we were going to be gagged? So if he is implementing anti-people policies, we should not talk? Did he actually satisfy the agreement as we had it? He promised us 20 per cent. But did we get 10 per cent? And I told my people to say who worked with him to say no to any invitation to assignment that is not on government issue, such as ACN rally, because it is a government of the opposition. We were even happy when he told us some of the things he said he would do and we saw they were the things we had formulated as policies while in government. In the blueprint I formulated, we were to construct three overhead bridges in Ibadan- at Sango, Mokola and Challenge. For four years, Akala didn’t touch this blueprint. And we said now that a governor has deemed it fit to implement, I was happy. But that is not the type of work I expected to be done. In terms of design? Yes. How? And what was the original dream like? Our original dream was to build a bridge that can accommodate all the traffic that must go there. We expected that the bridge will be strong enough to allow tankers, trailers pass through because the Molete Bridge constructed 35 years ago allows all kinds of vehicles. The biggest vehicle at the time that bridge was constructed was a Mercedez Benz 911 lorry and still accommodates till today, tankers of 33,000 litres of fuel and yet it has not shown any sign of weakness and distress. Now, the one they just commissioned, the government saw that it was strong enough for that kind of traffic even before it was inaugurated, they put a barrier at the mouths of the bridge and these barriers are such that even my Jeep cannot even ply the bridge. That is not our dream or maybe I should say it is a dream that has been badly executed. Can you imagine the amount of traffic 35 years ago which made the then government to build a strong and wide overhead bridge? But today, they are constructing narrow bridges. And again, we should ask at what cost? Please, when you talk of relative success, be careful. I have no problem with Ajimobi as a person. Maybe that is the policy of his own party, that you ignore the feeling of the people. But that is not the policy of my party, Accord. When is your party, Accord, going to start discussion with the merging parties so that it will not be swallowed by the APC? In this party of the country (South-West) what is APC? Is it not ACN? It is ACN plus CPC and ANPP? What were the votes of the ANPP and the CPC here in the last elections? Were they up to one per cent of the total votes cast? As far as we are concerned, APC in Oyo State is ACN. There may be euphoria that they are coming out in a new party today, but when the actual elections come, they will see the reality. What happened in Ondo State where Rotimi Akeredolu was imported to contest governorship election in the state, will always happen. When elections come, they will know they stand no chance. ACN is a very peculiar party in that it does not believe in internal democracy and decision-making is not in the hands of the party but the leadership. I am not afraid of APC in Oyo State and I believe in 2015, they will score less than the votes they got in 2011, of course, plus the votes ANPP and the CPC got.
Posted on: Thu, 18 Jul 2013 18:15:28 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015