Senator Adeseye Ogunlewe served in the Senate from 1999 to 2003 and was the minister of works in the administration of president Olusegun Obasanjo. He was a foundation member of the Alliance for Democracy, AD, before pitching his tent with the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. In this interview with Politics Editor, LEKAN ADENIRAN, he spoke on a number of issues, including why he dumped the PDP, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s presidential ambition, why it may not be possible for the handshake across the Niger between Yoruba and the Igbo, among others.
You were known to be a strong member of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, since 1999, what happened that made you to suddenly change course?
No, no, I was not a member of the PDP since 1999. I joined PDP in 2002. I contested as a senator under AD (Alliance for Democracy). I was a foundation member of AD and I went to the Senate. And we had this problem of impeachment against President Olusegun Obasanjo and we thought it was necessary for us to give him the support, not to sustain the impeachment. That was why the AD at that time wanted to protect the interest of the South-west people. So, I went to the PDP. And my friend, Funso Williams had an ambition to be the governor and we thought we had a better chance in the PDP. That was the reason I went. But, you know PDP in Nigeria is different from PDP in Lagos State. PDP in Nigeria has solid base particularly since they’ve been in power for long; South-south, South-east. But the south-west PDP has internal democracy problem and integrity. They are not used to internal democracy and it’s a big problem for whoever wants to be a member in the South-west. Unless that issue is sorted out where you allow the best candidate, the best people to run the party, they will still continue to lose elections.
But what were the elders in the party doing to ensure that there is internal democracy in running the party?
It is the elders who are quarreling and fighting among themselves by not allowing internal democracy to prevail. They normally want to impose their own preferred candidates, particularly in the exco. So, once they get hold of the exco, they control the entire party; they determine who is going to be the candidate. So, their primary objective is to hold on to the exco at the South-west and each state level and that has been an albatross for the PDP in the South-west.
Was that the cause of the crisis between Chief Bode George and Jimi Agabje in Lagos?
Not really. It is throughout the South-
west. See what happened in Ogun State. See what happened previously in Oyo; the same thing in Osun, Ekiti and Ondo states. These are predominantly PDP states, all things being equal. But, because of lack of internal democracy, they will always lose as one person would want to dictate who is going to be a member of the exco at the state level, which under their constitution, has a lot of influence on who becomes the candidate and it’s a big problem. It is happening in APC (All Progressives Congress) too. If they don’t manage it well, both political parties would be destroyed.
Are you now a member of the APC?
Oh! Sure. I am.
In recent past, you were known to be against Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. But all of a sudden, you are now in the forefront of the campaign to make him the president in 2023. What has changed?
Ironically, people believe I am against him. I am not against him. We are friends. It is only on policy issues that has been the main disagreement. But that surely has not affected our friendship in whatever form. And one way or the other he has assisted me and my family. And I think if he wants to run for any position, I shouldn’t be in opposition to him, particularly if the party zones the presidency to the South-west and he is interested and I am from Lagos State. What do you want me to do? That is the crux of the matter, but people don’t look at it that way. If they zone it to the South-west, and Bola Ahmed Tinubu indicates interest in that position, what do you think any sensible person from Lagos should do, rather than to support him? And that is what I am doing.
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Assuming the presidency is zoned to the South-west and Tinubu indicates interest, what are his chances?
Very easy! We’ve done the calculations and we just have to go back to the drawing board and do more calculations. Let me give you figures. In the registration, the North-west came first with 22 million registered voters. The South-west came second with 16 million. If the South-west is serious, we can register 20 million. In terms of voting, only 17 percent voted in the South-west. Out of 16 million, the total vote recorded was not more than five million. So, if we are serious and we are able to register about 20 million and we have a vote of 10, 12 million, he has a very good chance. And that is the statistics that we must all work on to achieve it. And it is achievable very easily. Look at Lagos with a population of about 20 million. The total registered voter is 6.5 million. The total PVC collected is at 5.5 million. The total vote cast is 1.2 million. So, if we all sit down, and that is what my own group, Global Mandate and Network have done now to sit down and say, what can we do to bring this figure to four million together. I can assure you, if we work together, we can get four million votes. And if we can get four million in Lagos, how many can we get in the other five South-west states? We can get the number. And once we get the number, we are home and dry. And that is a research we must all go into and find out why people are not voting. Why is the apathy? Why are they not coming out? What are their fears? And what do we do? We can allay their fears and make them vote massively for our own candidates.
That is for the South west. How about the remaining five zones?
We have people to organize the other zones. What we need to do is to make sure we have our own votes. And once we are have been able to get about 10 million votes, I don’t see any problem; we are going to win.
In recent weeks, some northerners have been saying that after the expiration of President Muhammadu Buhari’s tenure in 2023, the zone should still retain power. Where do you think this will take us to as a nation?
It is competition and we have to get ready. You cannot tie the hands of other zones from competing. But in your own zone, what do you have on the table that is to your advantage? What comparative advantage do you have? We don’t need to bother about what other zones are thinking about. It is what you are going to bring into the figures from your zone that will determine your seriousness.
In other words, you are saying that the North is also qualified to contest the presidency in 2023.
It is a party decision. There can be a little bit of resistance. But I am assuming if the party should take the decision to give the South-west the chance, what do we do as South-west? It is a precondition. We must first agree that it is the turn of the South-west. Then the South-west will determine who do we think is qualified to carry our mandate. And there, there will be competition within the South-west.
Don’t you think the South-west should back an Igbo president in 2023 in the spirit of fair play and equity?
If you look at the political history of Nigeria, the most difficult thing, and what one should not assume, is the possibility of a South-east and South-west collaboration. It is possible, but it has never happened. No matter how much the two of them tried, at one point in time, one would prefer to link up with the North. So, there is this fear of saying, if we collaborate and one of us goes behind to talk to the North. It has happened two or three times in the history of Nigeria. What do we do? And that is a possibility. Power is not served a la carte. It is not an easy thing. Anybody who is ambitious will find his way to the top. And it depends on how clever you are. To get the ticket is not an easy thing.
What is responsible for the schism between the South-west and the South-east?
We are both well-educated, we are both industrious. We are both like puritans. We can argue. We are not so selfish or self-centred or egocentric; I’m a Yoruba man; I am an eastern person. We have mixed together to an extent that we don’t care. And there is a lot of competition between the two zones, which predates the creation of Nigeria. But it is softening up now.
What about political differences?
It is not political differences. It is the nature of Nigeria. We are now even luckier that we have six zones. And each zone will fight for its own survival.
You have been known to advise President Buhari on how to get out of the current economic problems. Now, the president is trying to constitute a new cabinet. What agenda would you want to set for the incoming ministers?
I am a public works person. I grew up in the civil service. And my orientation is very different from the orientation of majority of Nigerians. And there is no way this economy can work if we continue with what we are doing now. During Obasanjo’s period, we had a seminar. I went to Harvard for this because Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor came and from all over the world, it was decided that smaller government is the best. And that there are critical areas of national development that must be handled by government; and there are other critical areas that must be handled by the private sector. And there was nothing like that in our law. So, we passed the Infrastructural Concession Development Commission, ICRC, law. The purpose was that it would be a vehicle for negotiating provision of critical infrastructure between the government and the private sector. And government must concentrate on the welfare of the people in the area of education, health and housing. But, the one that is commercial base should not be handled by the government. But the government continues and they don’t have the money. They are now borrowing money to provide infrastructure that has no gain in terms of profit, that they cannot profit from. All over the world, road construction is no longer the function of government, because there are users who must pay for using the road. All over the world, what they have done is to create a fund for construction of infrastructure like a road fund, like a public/private partnership. Like toll gates, so that users would pay for the use of those infrastructure as distinct from infrastructure that are welfare oriented.
I am about to write a letter to the National Assembly. They are aware because they passed the law. And the Act is there. How can the Federal Government pay one kobo for the construction of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway? It doesn’t make sense. All federal highways were tolled before. But the tolling was going into the federation account. It was not separated. With the passage of the ICRC Act, the government can negotiate with any company to construct the road and get money. Forty thousand vehicles ply the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway one way every day. Another coming, that is 80,000. You have enough funds to provide the best facilities for that road in terms of health services, security, light etc. That is what they do. But our own is government wants to award contracts. Government wants to run airports. Government wants to do everything. Which other country do we have government running airport now? Airport is not a social service. It is not a welfare service. And you can never use government fund to complete that kind of thing; it’s not done. We have so many issues like that, that government needs not participate anymore. The money they should have used to develop human resource of the country, they use it in these areas. So, primary school education, primary healthcare, good transportation for the people, care for the aged, good educational standard, these are the things they do all over the world. It is not you are constructing ports. You hear we want to construct Onne port; we want to construct that port; that is not the responsibility of government.
And we have to restructure. I was excited when president mentioned true federalism or something like that. But he must go beyond that. He must devolve powers to the states and the local governments. Federal Government should not be providing housing. It is the local government that knows the type of houses people will live in. They go abroad, they go to London, and they see what Metropolitan London City is providing as housing scheme. Give them (local governments) money. You want to do school feeding and the Federal Government is the one going about doing that. Primary school! They do strange things that as far as I am concerned, I don’t understand. Local governments, under the Constitution are the owners of primary schools.
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But the local governments were not paying when they had the control, which necessitated the states to take over.
How can they take it over? It is a constitutional matter. How can you take it from them? Where are these primary schools? Are they in Abuja? Who knows the principals? Who knows the students? Who knows the parents of the students? Who is supposed to know? Is it the Federal Government? You can monitor. You can supervise. That is what we had before. We had school inspectors; we had health inspectors; that is the best we can do. If you make sure you monitor, they would do it. What is the difference between a person at the local government and a person at the federal level? Are they not the same Nigerians? Why can’t we look at what we have been doing before now? All of us grew up in public schools. In Lagos alone, we have 18,000 private schools to 1,600 public schools. And the amount of money they pay has no correlation with their income. So, unless they steal or do things corruptly, they can never pay those money. And government who should now have the best form of primary schools, they neglect them. They are doing highway. They are running airports.
But the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway was concessioned to Bi-Courtney, but for more than three years, the company could not raise fund to begin execution of that project.
Was it done properly? It is not for you to concession. It is for you to allow the institution responsible to advertise, just as we did for the GSM. You advertise to allow for international competition. Then you have advisers. Then financial input, technical input and evaluate. It is not because you are close to Mr. President, they will give it to you as concession and you don’t know what to do. It was badly concessioned. And that is the problem of Nigeria. Look at what they did with Discos and Gencos. It has to be internationally advertised all over the world. Let anybody who is interested show interest. Don’t influence it, because if you influence it to your friends, when there is no performance, you will not be able to talk. How many countries have done what we are doing now and they’ve done it very well? We must think, because one, we don’t have the money. We borrow a lot and in the borrowing, there are too many leakages, once it is government’s own. So, where do we go from there? We must sit down and prioritise what we believe government must do in terms of welfare. Welfare of the people is more important than all these things we are doing. That we have over 15 million children out of school in a country is a source of serious concern. What must we do? What did Jakande (former Governor Lateef Jakande of Lagos State) do? How many classrooms do we need to accommodate all these people? Nobody is talking about it. We need one million classrooms, we must build them. How many teachers do we need? What about infrastructure; benches, chairs, tables etc for every school? Then you proclaim every child on the street; go to this school or that school, you will get food, you will get money. They would go. But, we have not even built enough classrooms. The ones we have built are 100 children per classroom. Some that were in school are now out of school because they are not taught anything. They are too many in a class. This is the only country I have seen that nobody is talking about statistics. How many teachers do we need in another five years? That is what is called national planning. All those economic planning they are doing has no relation with what is on ground. It is a problem. Have you ever heard any Nigerian government saying in another five years, we need x number of classrooms for primary schools, x number of laboratories for secondary schools, we need x number of classrooms for our secondary schools? It must be available so that you build them. That is when you can compel those children to go to school. Are they going to go to school that are not available?
How many health centers do we need? How many doctors and engineers must we produce? It is the human resource that they plan for. Our own is physical planning. We don’t do human resource planning. It is a pity. And we will remain like this almost forever if there is no change.
Are these problems not as a result of the structure we have in the country. Although, some people are clamouring for restructuring, but a section is against it.
That is what I am saying. And you cannot be against restructuring. Even the Constitution that is available now, if you follow it, it is restructured already. But the governors have taken over all the functions of the local government as prescribed in that Constitution. All their revenues have been taken over. All their functions; even the Federal Government is providing textbooks for primary schools. Which country does that, that the vice president is the one going about to do school feeding in primary school? What should the chairman of the local government be doing? They have education department. They have engineering department. They are a government on their own. It is the supervisory councilor for education that must be going to school to see whether they are feeding them because he knows the children. They will just pack children from somewhere when the vice president is coming and give them food because he doesn’t know them. But it cannot happen to the chairman of a local government or the supervisory councilor for education. He would know them by name. They live in the same community. What is the purpose of the councilor if the vice president is the one supervising school feeding? You give room for distortion if you want to impose all the authority on the grassroots. You are giving money to traders you don’t know. It is the local government that knows the market women. They can register them. But you, when you are coming, they will bring market women who are not from that community to collect your money. How would you know? The problem is we underrate the intelligence of the people in the local government. That is why they are local people. They have more knowledge of that environment than any other people. That is where they live. Are you telling me that in my own community now, I won’t know who is selling and who is not selling? I know them; I know their children. We must do things properly. If not, we are not going anywhere. Bring a genius to be your minister, it won’t matter. Hardly can any country assemble the same brains that we have in this past administration in terms of qualification, in terms of educational background. They are all first class people. But, where is the result? They believe because we are there, people at the state or local level are inferior. But an engineer in a local government may be more knowledgeable than you who is the minister because he is a local person. He knows where to build culverts, rural roads etc. so, you can’t be more knowledgeable than them. It is not brilliance or how educated you are alone that would determine your success. It is the policy of the government. What is the policy of your government? Is it liberalism? Is it capitalism? Is it welfarism? What do you want to provide for the people? Where is the statistics? You want to build x number of houses in the rural areas, who is going to build them? Those are the things we have to do in this country for us to get off. If not, we are all doomed.
What system of government are we practicing in the country. Are we practicing it the right way?
It is presidential. It is capitalism. It is about one percent of the elite that controls the economy. All the banks control all the resources of the country. They have a lot of money. All the former MDs of these banks are extremely rich. The richest people in Nigeria now are the people who have run the banks before. And nobody has asked questions where they got the money from. These are the people we are worshipping and they are less than one percent.
There is high level of insecurity in Nigeria today. We have the herdsmen/farmers crises, kidnapping and inter ethnic clashes among others. What is the way out?
Everybody knows the way out but to address them is our problem. Number one, let us have national identification card. Every Nigerian within a period of one year must have national identification card, must have a number and must have a data base. When you tell me your number, I press the button and read everything about you. It is doable within one year. It is technology. We would know your resources, we would know your tendencies, we know that youare a poor person; you don’t have work to do. Because, when you are filling your form, you tell us what you do; we know your capacity. What is your income? You tell us. Do you need a job or are you a business person? We don’t know the needs of individual Nigerians. So people resort to self help. They go on self help by kidnapping because there is no hope for them. Nobody is planning for them. We are planning without planning for the human resource of our country. Once we are able to do that, somebody can sit down and say in this local government, we have x number of people who have no job, who are out of school, what do we do for them? Ok, let us give them stipend; N30,000 every month until we give them jobs. That’s what they do all over the world. Once they know that government is going to take care of them, before giving them jobs, they know it is risky to be doing kidnapping. It is your responsibility as government to find jobs for them, to provide houses for them. We pay trillions as oil subsidy into the pocket of less than maybe 100 people. We could not use those trillions to rescue ordinary Nigerians who don’t have means of livelihood. And we say that they are criminals. How would they survive? They have to go into criminality. All these things are not peculiar to Nigeria. It happened all over the world before. What did they do to make sure that their citizens have at least moderate living? If you don’t have a house, they give you a house. If you don’t have a job, they give you money. In some communities, they give them vouchers. Anywhere you go, you get food. Once you are able to eat and you have somewhere to live and you have stipend, N30,000, it will be very difficult for you to justify kidnapping. Those who are criminals would be dealt with. But the majority would have been accommodated.
This thing is not rock science. It happened in this Lagos. In 1979, you see, because of competition, we don’t want to hear what has happened before. But we (Lagos) were running three shift system; morning, afternoon and evening school. People did not have the opportunity of going to school anymore because they cannot be going afternoon. What do you do in the interval? Jakande came and cancelled everything and provided those sheds as schools. And believe it or not, old people, who are 30 years old, 25 years old, went to primary school. Everybody went back to school because the government provided the facilities; the books, the dress, the shoes, everything was provided. To the extent that people who owned private schools cancelled the private schools and gave their benches and chairs to the public schools in their communities. I was part of it. But, once you don’t have vision…we have to get a visionary leader to conceive what I am saying. And it is doable. It has been done before. You will not believe the amount of people in the community who are participating in that programme without getting money. They made sacrifices. They came out to supervise the construction of some of the schools without getting money. But now, government is so far away from the people. And this is a problem. Unless we find a way of addressing the needs of the people, we would always get into problems because people have to fend for themselves. They have to survive.
How do we get out of the herders and farmers crisis?
We should have passed that stage 50 years ago. Go to Netherlands and other places. All they did was build stables. We don’t need to be moving cattle from one place to the other. All they need to do is go to communities, build stables like a big shelter like where they are going to stand to eat grasses or whatever they give them. When you bring your cattle, don’t roam about, take them to the stable. They will be eating there and if government wants, they could be providing them with food. They can even do mixture as if you are rearing chicken. Does chicken go on the streets? Build all those things (sheds) all over.
But people resisted the Ruga initiative
It is because they mentioned Ruga. Ruga is a Fulani word for settlement. The house they build is called Ruga. It means you want to settle Fulani in every community. People would resist. Build those facilities and when they are bringing their cows, they go into those stables. Have experts in grassing. They would come. The shed can be one mile long. Anybody who wants to buy would come there to buy. If you want to slaughter, you provide a slaughter house there. That is what they do all over the world. We are not a peculiar people. But they provide all these things for them, which is not a rocket science at all. Can you believe we have this same thing at Agege before? Agege Dairy Farm, where we were producing milk, where we were keeping all these cows under the shed. But the place has been converted to a housing scheme. People were parking there in the morning to buy milk. So, what is strange in all these things we are doing? And the Hausa/Fulani were there and they didn’t call it Ruga. We should do simple things.
We still have problem with power supply in this country. Even President said recently that he is not satisfied with the situation. What is your take on this?
It is not rock science. It is easy. We experienced this thing in 1979 when Jakande came. He created the Lagos State Electricity Board where we wanted to produce our own electricity. But the Constitution was a constraint because they said everything must go into the national grid and that you must get express permission from the federal to run your own facility. And that was the end. Why did we put that kind of thing in the Constitution? Once they remove it in the Constitution, in another few years, everybody will have power. Power is a technology you can buy from the shelf as if you are buying a car. But you must get permission from the Federal Government to generate and to transmit. Why do we get into problem? Let them remove national grid. You can have state grid, you can have zonal grid. Why must you produce power from Egbin and transfer it to Osogbo and from Osogbo it is now transmitted to all over Nigeria. What kind of country is this one? The power we produce in Lagos is 1.5 megawatts. It is enough for us to have uninterrupted electricity. But they would not allow it to happen. It will be sent to Osogbo for distribution nationwide. They know the solution, but they would pretend. Remove it from the Constitution, but they refused. They said it is because they are giving approval. But, they should not give approval; it should be removed from the Constitution. It is not a constitutional matter. Every state, every local government, every state can provide electricity on their own. In the world today, GEC has generator that is very big that can be manufactured from South Korea or United States and shipped here, you take it to a community, you put gas there and you have light. You can put turbine there, you will have light. It is a community matter. Why must we wait for national grid to have power in a community that can pay? Because they don’t want to pay, they want you to subsidise them.
And the grid keeps on collapsing…
It will collapse, until everybody collapses in the country too.
Let’s come back to Lagos. Are you satisfied with the performances of past goverments in the state since 1999?
We have to say without any doubt that they’ve done considerably well. Even if you don’t believe that they’ve done well, people can see that from Bola Tinubu to (Raji) Fashola to (Akinwunmi) Ambode, Lagos was not static. There were pockets of development, although, there could be need for improvement in the area of welfare services. I am a public service person. That is what a government is meant to do. Government is to provide for the survival of the citizens. So, government must build primary schools of the highest standards in the world. Government must build secondary schools and leave university for the private sector. Until that is done, you can build empire or anything you want to build, I as a public person, that is my orientation. I may be wrong but that is the way I was brought up; doing the greatest good to the greatest number. Build ramshackle houses, let them go and live there. Jakande in four years was able to build 10,000 units of houses that were sold for N6,500 for two bedrooms and N8,000 for three bedrooms. Today, those buildings they called ramshackle are still there. People have renovated them. People have modernised them as their income was increasing. So, it is not fairy tale and it is not how big a house is that makes it a house. A two bedroom is enough for a young couple. And they will pay only N5,000 per annum at the expense of government. That was the orientation of Awolowo and Jakande. But since then, we have not seen that kind of thing again. They build N30 million worth of houses. How many people can afford that? That is not for the masses.
Finally, is the Afenifere still fighting for the Yoruba interest?
They are, but they are divided. And that is the unpleasant part of what we are seeing. It is not good for us as Yoruba people to have a divided house. And it is because they are not opening it up like competition like the Ohaneze. In the Ohaneze, they vote and pick their head. John Nwodo as the head of Ohaneze is not of the same age as those Afenifere people. If they can be the father of the people and allow the younger ones to pick among themselves as the leader of Afenifere, the better for us. They don’t have to be there forever. The people who started Ohaneze or Arewa Consultative Forum are still alive, but they are not the ones running them. Why must our own be different? Probably, that would be the solution. If they can be a lot more democratic; they open up, they allow younger people to participate. If you ask them who are members of Afenifere, maybe they are about 100 people, whereas it must be all of us. So, they must open up. They must register us; if you want to be a member of Afenifere, go and register so that there can be competition. Once there is competition, it will be a lot more acceptable. Some people don’t even remember they exist.
