You confused Nigerians when you said publicly that you are still a PDP member but have asked all your supporters to join the LP. Which party do you actually belong to? I still repeat that I stand solidly behind President Goodluck Jonathan and I remain consistent about that position so if you ask me two times, 100 times, you will probably still get the same answer, You can interpret that whichever way you like. Is it true that you have settled your quarrel with Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu? We (himself and Tinubu) had a good relationship in the past and I think there was never a time when the relationship went haywire. I think what happened was in the realm of politics, we were operating under the same banner and I now found it auspicious, and also thought it was in the national interest that we should play national politics, so I left to join the PDP, probably it was the aftermath of that political game that played out that people saw and now concluded that we were foes. I can tell you that beyond that we have always been very good friends, our friendship dates back to decades and so if we both wake up one day and say enough of all these fights, are you not happy about it? That is what has happened, there was no meeting in London as being speculated, that is just but it is indeed obvious that we are not getting younger and so we felt that the time had come for us to stop you journalists from coming in between us. This is precisely what happened. Do you still have the ambition to become a Senator? I don’t know why everybody is so much interested in that, I think the important thing for us is to build the party (LP). Let us build the party without any colour, without any ambition and once the party is well built, I can assure you that anybody that is fielded for any post, the people will definitely vote for that party and I think for now what is very important is for us to build the party. In the same way, the people who are showing interest, if you look at all of them well, you will see that nobody has actually come out the way they will come out when it is time for them to come out, let me put it that way. They’ve indicated interest but more than anything else, we’ve all agreed that the first thing we will do is to build the party, have a strong party with a strong ideology and strong manifestoes. What is important which we also want the public to take note of is the fact that they are friends. I think we all agree that whatever it is, everybody should keep his ambition in his pocket, let us first and foremost rescue the people of Ogun State. I think that is the first challenge that we have. What is your assessment of Governor Ibikunle Amosun, your successor? Generally let me say that we are not here to evaluate the administration of Governor Ibikunle Amosun. If you remember accurately, after the elections in April, 2011, I declared that the elections had been fought, won and lost and the people of Ogun State should therefore support the new Administration. For me that is how it should be. I am yet evaluate the Administration, we are still taking down notes, at the point they would have spent three years which is probably in two months time, we would all be able to bring out the figures in black and white and the evaluation would be properly done. What is your comment on charges of corruption against you? As you are aware when a case is in court it becomes subjudice for anybody to make any comment on it. What I can say however is that it is nearly three years that I left office up to date, nobody has said to me that he had found a dime of government funds in any of my accounts, directly or indirectly. How would you react to allegations of political killings during your tenure? There were no killings in Ogun State and if anybody says that there were killings, I will now say they should give me the names of the people who were killed. In all of my eight years, I am not aware of any single political killing in the State, if you are aware of any killing say mention the name now so that I can recall my memory. To the best of my knowledge in all my eight years as the Governor of Ogun State, there was not even incident of political killing. You were the power behind the formation of the PPN in the State. How did happen? Let me seize this opportunity to explain how the Peoples’ Party of Nigeria (PPN) came about in the State. All of us (PPN), without exception were members of the PDP, we joined the PDP in 2001, at a point the party had no capacity to win elections, we had a party that was not a grassroots party and we worked hard to bring the party to the consciousness of the people. Don’t forget that even while I was in the PDP there was not a time that I denied my membership of Afenifere, instead we made it clear that we were the Afenifere in PDP. We took the PDP to all the nooks and crannies of Ogun State at that time and we sold the party everywhere. During the time we were taking the party round the State we visited about 1,000 palaces, Obas and Baales. We ran a government within the resources that were available to us. Contrary to what the propagandists have made all of us to believe, in Ogun State, we ran a very good government, a very healthy government. A number of you have forgotten that 2008 was a year of the world economic meltdown, in the cause of that meltdown, a lot of members of my cabinet had to forfeit about 25 percent of their salaries just for us to assist he State, that is the type of the economy that we ran. In the midst of that economic crisis, we had a good party but because of some of the things that we had done, some people thought there were so much money out there which led to the battle for the soul of the party. Why was the PDP enmeshed in crisis when you were governor? The issue was not that I had done anything wrong, but it was that I had become too strong so the plot to cut me down began let us cut him down, the usual thing that happens in Nigeria. The issue was that I had spent eight years so the next thing was that the party’s structure should be taken away from me. People can see where the conspiracy came from. Some people claimed they have spent N3 billion. Why would anybody spend #3 billion to take the party’s structure? It showed that some people used the party structure for what we don’t know. They spent so much money to take the party’s structure. So what happened in 2011 in Ogun State was a battle of principle. The rest is history, it has happened and you can now see how the mighty are now falling.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 08:09:59 +0000
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