Tinubu’ll build refineries; solve Nigeria’s problems – Hon. Jide Jimoh

Honourable Olajide Jimoh, in the Nigeria’s political context is qualified to be described as a grassroots politician having served the people at three tiers of government in the country. Jide Jimoh popularly called JJ was in the Lagos State House of Assembly for two terms, served as Local Chairman for two terms before capping it up with another two terms in the House of Representatives where he represented Lagos Mainland Federal Constituency for eight years consecutively. He just voluntarily stepped aside for other contestants after the just concluded 9th Assembly.

In this interview with Razaq Bamidele in his Lagos office weekend, the agile and vocal experienced politician scientifically dissected the state of the nation and arrived at the conclusion that, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, with the patience of the people and their support will deliver the on his mandate to solve the mirage of the country’s challenges.

He also has a word for the African leaders on how to handle the coup plotters.

Here are the excerpts from the interaction:

 

How would you assess the 100 days of Tinubu’s Presidency?

Let us thank God for his life and for our own lives too. God has given us a man that has been tested and trusted. God has given us the man that has the capability and capacity to do the job. God has given us the man that will do whatever he says. I mean the man that will walk his talk. Having said all that things; I want to say through experience that governance is not that easy. So many people might not know.

But President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as a man that has been tested and trusted, abinitio is quite aware of the enormous responsibility involved and he has begged for it, he has campaigned for it and he has asked for it. Now, we should not pity him. Even if I say we should not pity him, we must however be prayerful for him. I am saying there is the need for us to support him with prayers to ensure that the dividend of democracy as he has planned is delivered by him.

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Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu the President is a Tutor-General of the Nigerian Politics. He taught some people like us and a lot of other people you can think of. He has also been tested and trusted. This administration met so many things that require diligence to handle. And people must be patient and resilient in whatever thing we must do. It has been so rough and turbulent because the country’s revenue is not there!

We have the problem of oil subsidy removal, we have problem of foreign exchange. And all of them are the ingredients of good governance because without money, nothing can be done even if one has good intention. And remember Tinubu is a financial engineer. He will want to first of all put things in the right perspective by putting too much on the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) of Nigeria the way he did in Lagos State when he was governor of the state so at the end of the day, he would be able to use the revenue to work and provide infrastructure and other things we can think of like infrastructure in health sector, infrastructure in education sector, capacity building, personnel and so on.

All the aforementioned and others required to be done and they cannot be done without funding. Funding is key and very important. As I said, it has not been easy, but I know with God it will be easy.

Presently, Nigerians are complaining of agony, hardship, hunger and poverty, what do you expect them to do in the face of all this?

Like I said, we have to remain patient and be resilient in the sense that, the way we are looking at it is not the way he met it. In the last administration, I was in the House of Representatives; we did not made provision for fuel subsidy. By the time President Tinubu came on board, he took a bold and courageous political step with bold political will to make the pronouncement that fuel subsidy is gone and gone for good. There is nobody that wants to govern his people and will wish bad things to happen to them.

President Tinubu means well for Nigeria and we should also be patriotic to reciprocate by giving him the required support so he can be able to achieve that success.

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Tinubu is the Chairman of the ECOWAS. Immediately he assumed office there was military coup in a neighbouring country, Niger Republic and the sub-region power is preparing for military counter attack to restore democracy in the country. What do you suggest?

Coup plotting generally is barbaric and satanic. It is not the best system of governance. The best system of government in the world is the government of the people for the people and by the people which is known as democracy. It is much more important, necessary and good for livelihood of the citizenry. So, for anybody to have thought of taking over from an elected representatives of the people is nothing but madness and condemnable in all ramifications.

The coup that took place in Niger Republic is rather unfortunate and is not a development that should be supported. Now that the coup has taken place and somebody is illegally occupying the presidential seat, what the ECOWAS is saying is that the illegal occupier and his co-travellers is that they should quit and return power to the people’s government. When they return power to the people’s government, it is the people that would choose who they want and carry along with that person.

Do you support invasion of the country with force to enforce compliance?

There are so many ways to change things positively. Everything cannot be through war-war. It could be resolved by jaw-jaw. There is nothing we do that we would not eventually come back to the roundtable for discussion. I will want to appeal to the ECOWAS member states that we should tarry awhile because of so many lives of the people who are innocent that would be affected. It is better to save one life than wasting one life. So I want a lot of lives to be saved if we want Niger Republic to remain Niger Republic.

However, on the other hand, those charlatans who forcefully took over the people’s government in that country should also have a rethink that they are not doing the right thing to their fatherland and should therefore quit honourably. What they did was parochial.

As we were battling with the Niger Republic’s matter, another coup happened in Gabon. Were you not jolted?

I will describe it too the way I described the one that happened in Niger Republic as barbaric, parochial and satanic. They are selfish people who do not mean well for the people of their countries. Even if you don’t like a particular person, you should not spread a blanket of agony on the whole people of the country.

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Now they have announced the suspension of all the structures of democracy like the parliamentary! Is that not madness?! Structures that have been built democratically over the years now being dismantled! Can you imagine that?!

On the other hand, are those shoved aside blameless?

That is why I said earlier that the worse democratic government is far better than the best military regime. Democratic government is always far better. Military people are naturally self-centred. They are not trained for an art of governance; they are trained against external aggression. They are trained to carry guns and not to rule. They are trained to compliment and support the system of government of the people by the people.

With this sad development in Africa, can other Presidents have correct psychological frame of mind to concentrate on governance?

There is no way they could have rest of mind to concentrate on governance. That is one thing, if in an environment or in the neighbourhood, your neighbour is not secured, what that is telling you is that you too are not secured. And if there is no peace there cannot be any growth. Without peace there cannot be any development because peaceful environment is synequanun to economic development. Where there is no peace, there is not going to be development. Nobody would be able to sleep with two eyes close.
What we are saying is that, coup here today and coup there tomorrow is a bad signal to Africa. And the Africa Union (AU) should have to sit down and have an elastic thought on what is on the ground and how do we address it so that we would not run into limbo.

In Nigeria, it is about oil, oil and oil. The question now is what makes it difficult for the country to maintain just one refinery effectively?

I read a piece yesterday where former Head of State, retired General Yakubu Gowon said when he was serving as Head of State, he built three refineries before he left. He did mention Port-Harcourt, Kaduna and Warri refineries. And added that amount spent on them was meagre. And I started to wonder why the whole country cannot build and maintain at least only one refinery now!
And to be candid, to escape from the jaw of hardship confronting Nigeria presently, the country must build and maintain at least one functional refinery. And I know and believe that he present President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu will be able to do that because he is an accountant, and he is an auditor. He was a former governor who has the experience; he was a former Senator in charge of budget, appropriation, finance and every other thing. I believe he has the wherewithal to do it. He has a way to do it and he will do it.