Obasanjo Does Not Believe In Democracy - Odumakin June 16, 2007 | posted by Mobolaji Aluko (Archives)

 

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INDEPENDENT
June 16th, 2007

Obasanjo Does Not Believe In Democracy - Odumakin
 
Mr Yinka Odumakin is the publicity secretary of the Pan-Yoruba socio cultural group, Afenifere. He is not a man given to frivolities; he shoots from the hips and very bluntly too. In this interview with Senior Correspondent, Olusola Balogun, he was at his best as he reviewed the eight years of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo’spresidency and returned very poor marks for him. Odumakin also advocated a mass action to get the recent election reversed. He also accused the former president of polarising the unity of Yorubaland. He warns Nigerians not to expect anything from the government of President Umaru Yar’Adua. Excerpts:

There has been a lot of calls that the last elections be cancelled, while others have insisted that the result should be allowed to stay. What is your opinion about this?

The truth is, it will be too charitable to say that what we had on April 14, 21, and 28, were elections, there were no elections. I think that when decency returns to this country, the National Assembly will have to make a law to expunge the elections from our record books because there were no elections on those days. For the first time, all those who oversee elections agreed that the elections were flawed. It was so clear from the beginning that INEC (Independent National Electoral Commission) was not ready to hold a credible election. In fact, until the collapse of the third term, INEC was not ready for the elections. It was after third term collapsed that they started showing some level of preparation to deceive the people that they were preparing for an election. It was clear that they were not ready for the elections. At the end of the day, the so-called election was a complete sham. Over 95 per cent of areas in Nigeria did not have elections on those days. It is either voting had taken place a day before the election or figures were concocted to just get people in. In some states, though there was low turnout of voters in most parts, especially on the 21 and 28, yet they gave us millions of voters. What Obasanjo did was simply to select those he thinks should rule us for the next four years. It is unfortunate that a president does not believe in democracy. He said that much that he does not believe that the vice-president and the deputy governor should be elected on the same platform with the president and governors. He said he would want a situation where, the president, after he had been elected will then send a bill to the National Assembly or the State Assembly to ratify the appointment of their vice or deputy. Can you believe that coming from a president that ruled a democratic Nigeria for eight years? He wants to select a man that will step into office in the event of the death of the president or the governor. That is why this man failed to give Nigeria a democracy in 1979 and also failed to give it to us again in 2007. He does not believe in democracy at all.

You said the National Assembly should nullify this election, do you know the implications of that, it means they will nullify their own elections too?

I said when decency returns to this country. These ones cannot do that. The only thing that can reverse it now is if the masses decide to rise up and flush these people out. The other option is for the judiciary to live up to the pledge of the president of the Court of Appeal that the outcome of the tribunal ruling will impress the whole world.

You seem to have a lot of confidence in the judiciary on this matter?

We have to. There are still very good judges in the judiciary today. In 2003, three judges were dismissed in Akwa Ibom State. That is to show that there are still discipline in the judiciary. Look at the way the judiciary reversed so many of the impeachment cases, it shows that they are still very upright. These makes people like me to believe that there is still some hope in the judiciary.

Obasanjo and the police said that a drug baron killed Bola Ige. You are the publicity secretary of Afenifere do you believe it?

Uncle Bola Ige was not only a frontline member of Afenifere, he was the deputy leader and I was very close to him. I was with him three weeks before he was killed. We were close to him trying to resolve the crisis in Afenifere, I remember on one of such meetings, he said he is coming home to reorganise the Alliance for Democracy (AD) in the South West and to ensure that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is not able to get any of the five Yoruba states, but that he will still want us to work for Obasanjo to get a second term. He said that the only chance the Yorubas have to be at the top of national politics is Obasanjo. He told us that he has seen the antics of the PDP and he said a lot of things that makes me to doubt that any other person would have killed Ige but the PDP. As he was saying this, something in me told me that Ige is treading a very dangerous ground. I remember that Obasanjo was humiliated in 1999 by Falae in Yorubaland and his (Obasanjo) people in PDP used to taunt him with it, and to think that Ige wants a repeat in 2003. The Yoruba’s really humiliated him. He lost everywhere and the only reason why he picked Ige and Pa Adesanya’s daughter was to have his own pound of flesh. He does not forgive and for him, the beginning of do or die was in 2003. He is ruthless and will not allow any opposition on the way to what he wants. I was so sure Obasanjo was not prepared to lose the South West in 2003. He was prepared to do anything to achieve that and for somebody to now come and tell us that a drug baron killed Ige in December 2002 is all rubbish. It is a very unfortunate and an insensitive statement to make. Obasanjo says he is Bola Ige’s friend, can he look Funso and Muyiwa in the face and say that a drug baron killed their father? If a drug baron killed him, why did it take him this long to tell the world? A drug baron killed the chief law officer of a country and nothing was done about if for over four years. That is incredible, are we saying that this country has been taken over by barons? Are we saying drug barons are now in charge in Nigeria and that they can do anything and go away with it? Will he say that if Dora Akunyili or Nuhu Ribadu were killed now he will not find their killers because those who did so are drug dealers? A man that cannot apprehend the killers of a prominent Yoruba son when he is in power will not have a role in Yoruba land. He is a great disappointment to himself and the whole of the Yoruba nation. It is a shame. He was a real embarrassment to the Yorubas. If the rest of the country had 90 per cent respect for us, it has now dropped to 25 per cent. A Yoruba man had the opportunity to impact positively on Nigeria, he refused to do that. He refused to restructure Nigeria. Common electricity could not be fixed. We are now a butt of ridicules among other tribes. He made charlatans his friends. He raised the Ubas’s of this world, he is friend to Adedibu in Oyo, he encouraged charlatans to get to prominent places. Look at Ekiti, he was the one that imposed Fayose on them. He went around creating crisis in Yorubaland.

Are you saying he will not have a say in Yoruba land?

He will have a say among those he rigged elections for, those charlatans he put in place, but among the reasonable people, he won’t have a say. What will he say he had done for the Yorubas while he was there?

Awolowo was never the president of Nigeria, he was only the premier of the western region but his name won’t be forgotten for a long time. Awolowo came into Yoruba politics when there was inter-tribal war and he reunited all of them. He introduced education and health programmes to get people together. Obasanjo only caused division in Yoruba land.

I was in Florida last October and I met a lot of Yoruba professors who would have not been professors but for Awolowo’s free education policy. In Ikeja, Awolowo did the industrial complex in that place. Obasanjo has been president of Nigeria for eight years, what has he done for the Yoruba nation? He has raised the Adedibus of this world, raised those charlatans in Ekiti. He raised those who were political thugs under Awolowo, they are the people Obasanjo gave a larger than live image. Look at the people he picked as ministers for the eight years, they are people without a track record in Yorubaland. What has he done in Yorubaland since 1999, is it roads or is it water that he had provided? He has done practically nothing for the Yoruba nation.

Do you think the Yoruba nation can speak with one voice again because it is like the unity among the Yoruba nation has been seriously shattered?

Obasanjo is a Machiavellian follower. He put a knife in the heart of the Yoruba people and things fell apart, but if you look at the history of the Yoruba nation you will see that we always come together after each time when we dispersed and we are faced with a common threat. This is because of our Yorubaness; we have a way of rearranging ourselves. The irony of it is that the same office Obasanjo used to disunite our people; other people have used it to unite their people.

Are you saying Obasanjo used his presidency to disunite the Yoruba people?

The first thing he did was to use appointments to scatter Afenifere. He picked Bola Ige and then picked the daughter of Pa Adesanya as another minister. The intention is not that he loves these people but to disorganise the organisation they represent. He started creating crisis here and there. He formed the Yoruba Council of Elders (YCE) and if you look at those that formed the YCE, they are the people in Afenifere. He ensured that all these people he created are loyal to him. He will now use them and drop them after he is through with them. He picked those who have no constituency to fall back to; those whose people cannot call them back. He made Fayose governor of Ekiti to humiliate the Professors in Ekiti. When you raised an Adedibu in Ibadan and made him the garrison commander in Ibadan what are you trying to do? You are making a man who is a driver of Ayo Adebanjo as the leader of Ibadan. If he picked Richard Akinjide, it would have been better.

Which Adebanjo are you saying Adedibu was driver to?

The same Pa Adebanjo. Adedibu used to drive them to campaign. When you make people like that leaders of a group. People who have no social scruples whatsoever you destroy the social fabrics of that society.

Obasanjo said he did not desire to have a third term that, if he had desired it, he would had prayed for it and God would have granted his request.

I think if he still goes to church he should go before his pastor and ask for forgiveness. I don’t know if they do deliverance in his church, he needs deliverance from the spirit of lies. Can you imagine he came on national television to say that? I know people he told should work for third term. A serving governor told me that Obasanjo begged another governor to appeal to him to support the failed bid. I was detained over the same issue and he cut his phone on a particular governor six times simply because he was upset that I demonstrated against the third term. So many people were detained over the same matter. Is he saying the security agents did all that for the fun of it and out of their own volition?

All the money put together to push through the issue, where is the money coming from/Is he saying the revelation from Atiku Abubakar was not true? Today, so many PDP senators did not return, is it not because of their opposition to the third term bid? PDP even threw its weight behind it, was that PDP not under him? Was it not because of this third term that there was a big fight in the PDP?

Obasanjo prayed for third term, God did not answer him; he worked for third term, Nigerians frustrated him and (he should be) asking for forgiveness for the tension he caused in the country. Does he think we are fools? If he can deny his third term agenda then it shows that he is not a man of honour. He is trying to rewrite history and that is unfortunate.

Do you expect anything spectacular from the government of Umaru Yar’Adua?

No. Ordinarily, he would have been a very good President but the way he came in will make it difficult for him. He is one of those governors that do not have any file with the EFCC (Economic and Financial Crimes Commission) on corruption. He came from a radical background he was a disciple of the late Bala Usman. He was with the NEPU (Northern Element People’s Union, PRP (People’s Redemption Party) in the Second Republic. But unfortunately he has two things against him. The state of his health, at least he had admitted that he had a failed organ to the international media. Again the process through which he emerged is most repressible and dastardly. If he tried to be too smart those who put him there will call him back and remind him how he got there.

He is heading a government that will not have a honeymoon with Nigerians. Ordinarily he should have six months of honey moon with the people but he won’t have that because of the way he came in and the things Obasanjo did on the twilight of his administration. He sold the Kaduna and Port Harcourt refineries; he sold Egbin power plant to his friends. Nigerians will not look kindly on any government put in place by Obasanjo, who will not want to reverse those things.

How will you react to the first set of appointments Yar’Adua made?

I think it goes deeper than that. He has appointed northerners as his chief of staff, secretary to the federal government and the national security adviser. The Senate presented is from the North. This lopsidedness has raised a very fundamental issue. We that have said that Obasanjo should restructure Nigeria have now been proved right. Instead of him to restructure Nigeria he was busy working for his third term. I remember that in August 2005, at the 11th convention of Egbe Omo Yoruba in Atlanta Georgia. I said that Obasanjo was wasting Yoruba tenure and that as far as we are concerned he has not done anything. I said that all Obasanjo was doing was personnel restructuring and that can be reversed in two days. The governor of Ogun State, Otunba Gbenga Daniel, came in the evening and tried to rubbish what I said. He said that the fact that Obasanjo’s presence in Aso Rock had made it possible for gobi cap to be worn in Aso Rock. Today, if Gbenga Daniel goes to Aso Rock and sees any gobi cap, it is the one Obasanjo forgot that they have not swept out. In the appointments he had made so far, you will not bring any gobi cap. In the present arrangement what we will have is the Speaker (of the House of Representatives).

Yar’Adua will have to contend with the national structure. The cries of marginalisation will come up again and he will be on edge. Already, the Igbo are saying they don’t want the deputy senate President given to them. That is where Yar’Adua has missed it.

There is no time than now for Yar’Adua to organise a national conference and restructure Nigeria and address the issue of our electoral laws. He will be deceiving himself to say he can do it. If he wants to be a good leader he should be ready to subject himself to a fresh election after the national conference. If he wins fine, but if he does not do that I think he is deceiving himself. His regime will be a regime of serious crisis, apart from the economic crisis that Obasanjo has created, the cries of marginalisation will be so loud that he won’t be able to cope. We have never had it this bad that the three arms of government will be coming from one part of the government. It is not good for cohesiveness.

But Yar’Adua only inherited the National security adviser and the Chief of staff from Obasanjo.

That he inherited them is because it tallies with his own plans and suits him. If he did not want it he could easily have changed things. If Obasanjo, who was from the South West picked Northerners it is only good for him to pick from the south too. Fair is fair. In politics appearances are more real than the reality. What we have now does not augur well for a multi-ethnic Nigeria

Yar’Adua said he would embark on electoral reforms too.

We need more than a committee for electoral reform. He that must come to equity must come with clean hands. The President came through a very fraudulent election. He cannot give what he does not have; he lacks the credibility and legitimacy to give us an acceptable electoral reform. The issue on hand goes beyond a committee. His own election too has to be re-examined; we need to look at how he got there too. Reshaping Nigeria is beyond good intention.

The problem we have is the structure of Nigeria. It is defective and no one can make it work unless we rework the system, we will continue to have problems. He is talking of a marshal plan for the Niger Delta; what does he know about marshal plans? We are talking of a people that are deprived of their God-given resources and he is talking of a marshal plan. Only proper federalism can solve the Niger Delta problem. If he thinks he will do anything from Abuja he has missed it..

 

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