As Nigeria inches towards 2019 general election, main political actors are aligning themselves against one another and verbal wars are gradually taking the centre stage. In this interview with NATHANIEL AKHIGBE, Yinka Odumakin, the spokesperson for Afenifere, a pan-Yoruba social-cultural group, takes a critical look at President Muhammadu Buhari’s stewardship since 2015 and the possible alliance that could dislodge him in 2019. Excerpts:
Recently, President Buhari and ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo involved in direct and indirect verbal wars after the latter asked the former not to seek re-election in 2019, for what he called poor performance. The President hit back when he told members of the Buhari Support Group that a former president spent $16 billion on power and yet Nigeria is in darkness. What do you make of these political intrigues ahead of 2019?
I think it is not a coincident that the President came out smoking against Obasanjo a day after the former president visited Afenifere in Akure. We could see the veto in the President, and of course the PTF saga. But the unfortunate thing in the whole saga is that for instance, I remember in 2015 when the APC was seeking to contest elections they went to Obasanjo in Abeokuta to beg him to navigate them. So, they were not aware of this $16 billion at that time. In the last three and half years now they said that they are fighting corruption, they never remember the issues until now we are moving towards elations and Obasanjo is no longer in their boat that they now remember that there was $16 billion whatever. Well, I believe that if they think that they have a case against Obasanjo, he has said he is ready to be probed. They should probe him if he has committed infractions or offences as per the power sector.
But I also think that we need the President also to do more work because of when the president speaks, I remember in those days when we were young, when the government official speaks it enters civic class, you can take it as it is. But when the President said it is $16 billion and evidence started coming out that it is not $16 billion, it is $6 billion, and it is this and that! It doesn’t matter even if it is $1 billion, the President should be able to give accurate information. I listen to a recent speech that “between 1999 and 2015 that oil sold for $100 a barrel throughout those periods”. I mean, pupil in school will want to quote that; and they know that in those periods oil was sold as low as $8/$10 per barrel. And it reminds me of an America vice president, I think it was under Bush, who went to the public school and ask a pupil to spell potato and the young girl spelt it correctly but the VP said she was wrong and he was correcting her. So, after the VP left they asked the young girl “what is your reaction to what happened between you and the VP today”? And the young girl said “the future America’s vice president should study hard”. Be that as it may, I also believe that the Aruna Adamu report on the PTF; I have read the report and that report is scandalous! I also wonder why President Obasanjo did not act on that report at the time because the reports is damning of the humongous of the fraud perpetrated in PTF. So, rarely, I think we should get to that point in our country where we should not sweep these things inside the carpets when it happens, so that they don’t become just political weapons. If we are serious about fighting corruption in our country and dealing with corruption when it happens, and not to use corruption has a political weapons. And what has happened with Obasanjo has shown one thing about these governments; like I said that in 2015 they did not know that Obasanjo spent some money on power without power, when they went to beg to navigate them; when Obasanjo and them were doing symbiotic in the last three and a half years, now that is no more before we are hearing about $16 billion on power, that is exactly what is happening with anti-corruption war in Nigeria. If you against APC today and there is any allegation against you they will magnify it before they will even take you to court and they will start using mass media to persecute you. But once you cross to APC and they see the broom they will pass over you. That is not how to fight corruption.
Some sections of the Nigerian public also believe that President Buhari is jittering ahead 2019 over his fallout with Obasanjo. Is Obasanjo that powerful today in Nigeria political landscape in terms of what he says, who he supports; does Obasanjo really decide who becomes Nigeria’s president, bearing in mind his warning to former President Goodluck Jonathan not to contest the 2015 election and his subsequent defeat?
I think with the kind of arrangement we have in Nigeria now, there are some powers, interests and blocks that you cannot just push aside because they are influential within what we have now. When we talk of people like Obasanjo, Danjuma, Babangida, few people like that, some from military background, some from economic sphere, and those who have the power of money. So, there are some captains in some sectors that every presidential aspirant will want to relate with because their support is invaluable, or not being against the aspirant even though he is not supporting the aspirant. But when such forces begin to come against you there is tendency for an incumbent to become quite uncomfortable.
Now, the APC congresses: the party has been riddled with crises which have continued to linger; the chairmanship tussle, the convention problems and many issues confronting it; where do you think all these leave the APC ahead of 2019?
I will not bother my head so much about APC congresses because they are basically their internal affairs, except that this is a ruling party: the party that controls the government that will conduct the general elections in 2019. And if they are conducting their internal affairs this way, since you cannot give what you don’t have and it is said that domestic polity determines foreign policy. How will they conduct and influence the general election outcome? When there was Local Government election in Kano we saw a lot of underage voters. INEC set up a panel to look at the issue but till date we have not seen the reports of that panel. Look at the man in Rivers State, the man who was indicted in INEC reports on by-election in Rivers, who is now brought back as leader of SARS. So, when I look at the impunity that is going on within the ruling party, how they are conducting their congresses, and how they are killing their own members. And if it is APC to APC and in the first election, officially there was fifteen deaths reported; second election killings all over the places. A Yoruba proverb says that ‘when a man takes a pestle to hit his brother from same father and mother in the head, then his half-brother should run for cover’. So, clearly, the schisms, the deviations and acrimonies within the APC over their congresses and primaries and the way they are conducting it, we are interested observers. Like I said, a lot of what they do within their own party, will dovetail into the general relation. And if they are conducting their internal affairs this way, what that suggests to those who want to run against them is that there will be war! And what are the prices for war? It means our country is in trouble!
There are Nigerians who believe that the 2019 presidential election is already rigged in favour of Buhari and his APC. Do you share this sentiment?
I don’t think so. There may be appearances and cause for fear. First of all, we have unique scene: for the first time in the history of our country, the President of Nigeria and the chairman of INEC are from the same zone. The nephew of the President, a lady, is today said to be the most powerful woman in INEC. We have a situation whereby out of 17 serving security chiefs in Nigeria today, 16 are from the north. You control the Police, the Army, the DSS, and the rest of them. So, clearly, given the kind of situation on ground in Nigeria, it can lead to worry and fear; but when the people are determined, that enough is enough, I believe that all these things will pail into insignificance. And except the people are not determined, but when they want their vote to count and be counted and they want to enforce their will, no army in this world can stand against an idea whose time has come.
People are talking about political parties coming together to form solid alliance against the APC. Can the APC be removed through such alliance in 2019 and can this alliance reach agreeable consensus for this purpose?
We saw it in 2015 whereby a ruling party was removed. So, the indefeatability of a ruling party has been removed and demystified in politics. Yes, the opposition parties, if they have strategy the best thing for them is to come together to fuse. Because once you go on different platforms as oppositions, there would be trouble for them. I remember in Oyo State in 2015, the incumbent Governor Ajumobi scored about 37percent of the votes, Ladoja had about 34 or so, another person had 30 or 28percent of the votes. So, they divided the votes; 37percent was what gave the victory to the incumbent. So, in order to avoid that kind of situation in 2019 at the national level, all the opposition parties must be truthful and agreed on a thing; it should not be more than one serious candidate against the incumbent. Like I said, the incumbent has a lot of advantages: the security, INEC, much money, and so on. The only chance against them is pull together, set aside differences and realise that it makes more sense for you to have 10percent of 100 than to own 100percent of zero. Because if the oppositions don’t get their act right by going against the incumbent with many parties and the incumbent wins, they are back to zero. Ultimately, if they don’t come together, they are wasting their time.
Life is becoming very cheap in Nigeria with state of insecurity here and there: the killings in Benue, Taraba, and Kaduna, just to name a few, have become a source of concern to everyone including the international community. How worried are you?
Well, like someone recently said that the best commodity in Nigeria today is blood. Blood is shared in Nigeria today every now and then. Human life means nothing today in Nigeria. Something happened last Sunday: I was at the airport in Lagos and I met the former AGF, Babachair Lawal; and he said to me after I greeted him. ‘You are the one giving my Oga trouble. I will kill you’. Although, he said it jokingly, but when people at that level begin to joke about death, that tells you the level where the state has gone: that human life means nothing again! And that is why it is worrisome that the government has done nothing. People are being killed mercilessly across the country, and the government is looking the other way. In fact, in most cases, the government of the day is even making excuses for the killers by telling the victims to ‘go and live in peace with your neighbours’. Killer neighbours! The IG said ‘those who are killing people are they not Nigerians’? The Minister of Defense said ‘the reason why they are killing people is because their victims have blocked the cattle routes’. And I am not aware of anybody that has been arrested or apprehended for this mass killing going on across the country. So, this situation has created panic within the system that perhaps, those who are doing the killings have cover from State Forces. And when General TY Danjuma came and said ‘yes, there is collusion between the military forces and the killers’, even though the Army came out to say ‘they are crying foul where there is none’, ‘I tend to believe Danjuma because if there is no protection for these killers, they would have been brought to book. Meanwhile, they are still relentless in their merciless campaign of death. I am really worried about what is going on in some sections of the country.
Are you also worried that the President, having disclosed that the IG of police disobeyed the his order to relocate to Benue State till peace returned and the IG till now has not obeyed that order but still sits as IG of the Nigeria Police? Does this mean that the President is not really in charge of Nigeria, as it is being insinuated by many critics?
Well, I want to take that as pint of the salt. How can you as the President of Nigeria instruct an IG of police to go to a place and he refused to go and all you can do is to lament ‘I didn’t even know that he did not go there’? And two months after the man is still in office! There is something they call ‘Taqqiya’, which is deception. That is what that one is all about. The IGP today we know is a sacred cow. And when you look at the antecedent of him becoming IG; this was a man who was CP in Kano in 2015, he was in charge of Kano as Commissioner of Police during the 2015 general election and 1.9 million votes were recorded for one of the presidential candidates and that figure was a million more than those recorded in the National Assembly elections. And hours after the announcement of the results, the REC, his wife and two daughters were burnt to death. It was the same IG that said that the fire incident was natural and that was the last we heard of the incident. A family of four, wiped out just like that! Between then (2015 and now), he was first taken to the Force Headquarters as AIG, and within a few months, he became the IG of Police and about 30 officers were retired to pave way for him. DIA and AIG officers were retired prematurely to pave way for him to become the current IG! So, if that kind of thing (disobeying presidential order) happens, you can understand where it is coming from and why that will happen and he is still the IG of Police! The fact that he is still the IG shows clearly that he is untouchable!
Sir, after the trended ‘transmission’ ‘transmission’ comments of the IG and President Buhari’s prolong medical trip last year and yet, the President would be seeking re-election in 2019, are Nigerians not neglecting their civic responsibility by not demanding and obtaining information on the state of health of these two public servants?
For the President, I think that he has spent close to 150 days outside this country treating himself for an undisclosed ailment. And for the National Assembly, one is left to wonder why they are not doing anything about it. This is part of the problems of our Constitution which emphasises that to enquire about the state of health of the president at least two-third members of his cabinet should send letter to the National Assembly to investigate the health of the president. But how are we going to get ministers to do that? Even a president that is dead and his corpse in the mortuary cannot get enough ministers to sign that his health should be investigated! And I wonder why in all the amendments to the Constitution the National Assembly is not looking to this spot. As for the IG, when you look at what happened in Kano, it is dangerous for the polity to have a man whose state of mind you are not sure of to be IG in a country of over 180 million people; because this is somebody that is dealing with force that carry weapons. So, it is clear that given what happened in Kano, when the IG could not read his own script but rather ‘transmission’ and ‘commission’, there is a need to examine the state of his mind to be sure that his state of mind is well to function in that office.
You look at the southwest politics which is hugely divided along party lines; what is Afenifere doing to close these lines ahead of 2019 presidential election?
Well, there are more agreements on how to build consensus in terms of…not everybody, but at least the majority taking position. Some time last year we had a Yoruba Submit in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, where we stated clearly what the Yoruba want out of this country in terms of federalism and the rest; that is where we have always stood and will continue to stand. And I think what we are trying to do is galvanise the whole of southwest around those demands.
What is happening with the ‘Handshake across the Niger’?
Yes, ‘Handshake Across the Niger’ is still on. It was initiated to ensure that we rally ourselves and create understanding and for the people of the southwest and across the Niger to know that there is a shared origin among them and that we share similar issues like the structure of Nigeria; and that we must come together to ensure justice and equity. Just few days ago we saw that the southeast held its own structural rally and the southwest was there in full force. And Chief Adebanjo was dressed in full Igbo attire. That shows that the expected time has come and we will continue to pursue greater understanding among our people. And after that we have seen the Obi of Onitsha and the Ooni of Ife are promoting this idea more and we will continue to do it until we get the idea to the grassroots that we share a common ancestry; common interests; common civilisation and that we should use it to promote harmony between us and the rest of Nigeria.
What are you hearing about Nnamdi Kanu and is Afenifere interested in his whereabouts?
When the Python Dance of the military was happening in the East, we made our position known about the fact that we are against the use of force against unarmed civilians and declaring them terrorist organisation, whereas the Fulani herdsmen who have killed thousands of innocent Nigerians have not been so treated. We saw that as double standard. We pray and hope that Kanu is safe and that in due cause, whatever case the government has against him would be dealt with and he comes back home to play his role.
Were you to be seating with President Buhari now, what would you be telling him concerning the governance of Nigeria?
Mr. President, you were elected to protect the lives and property of Nigerians but in the last three years your government has not shown that the lives of human beings matter anything. You have rather shown that you care more about cattle than human beings in Nigeria; that should not be so. When you were sworn-in you said that you belonged to everybody and to nobody. But you have shown that you do not belong to all Nigerians. You are to protect all Nigerians and give them a sense of belonging, not only those who are rearing cattle.
