Chief Ayo Adebanjo is a lawyer, politician and Afenifere chieftain. In this interview with DGossip247, the former National Chairman of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) urges Nigerians to support President Muhammadu Buhari. He also speaks on the state of the nation, crisis rocking the All Progressives Congress (APC), anti-graft war, National Conference, among other issues. Excerpts:
How would you assess the state of the nation?
What can someone say than to wish the government well? The rancour in the National Assembly is not a good start but I hope the ruling party will find its feet very soon. I am a critic of the government because I was never part of the All Progressives Congress (APC). I have my reservation about the party, which was known to everybody. But since people have voted for the party, it is my wish as a senior citizen, that they should prove me wrong by performing. All we want is progress for the country. They say they can do it; let’s see them performing. For them to perform is in the interest of the country and my interest because failure to perform is to the disadvantage of the country and my own disadvantage.
You said you are particular about the performance of the government, how will you assess President Muhammadu Buhari’s government since May 29?
It is too early to do that. I am not one of those who rush to make a decision. They may not have taken off fine; that does not mean they won’t perform. For example, a child in primary school might be a dullard but by the time he gets to secondary school, he may perform very well and be a first class.
Why did you describe the rancour over the leadership of National Assembly as a faulty start?
I am very cautious as a critic of the party in government, so I don’t want to adopt the attitude of ‘I told you so.’ There is nothing I can do about it for the next four years. So, if I am a patriot, which I believe I am, I should wish the government well to perform. I wouldn’t like the four years to be wasted.
What is your take on the controversy surrounding the emergence of the National Assembly leadership?
There is no doubt that it was below the expectation of many. I know they would get to the type of trouble they are in now because the problem is their conglomeration. APC is a pack of incompatibles and we can see the incompatibility now. Those who came together as APC members only agreed on Goodluck Jonathan being sent out. That was the only thing they agreed upon.
These fundamental issues that affect the country are – How to run the country? What has been the problem of the country? What are the conflicts in the country, which ought to be solved? The nationality issues raised at the last National Conference. But they (APC) don’t appear to think that much. You can remember when Jonathan decided to convene a National Conference, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu said it was a diversionary tactic. But we can see the question of ethnicity issues in APC struggle. Nobody is talking now about the party’s objectives but about my area must have this or that. And these are things they ought to have settled.
I don’t want to talk about their defects. I have been in this game for 65 years, so I know all the composition of APC. To me, when you are forming a party, you must agree on fundamental things in the party. It is not after you have won the war that you decide how the loot would be divided.
These are part of the things APC should have decided before they went into the merger. They should have thought about; when we merge and form the government, who will take what? Why should I take this and why should you take that? All that should have been settled.
That they didn’t do it before is the cause of the crisis. But now they can learn in the process because we can all see what their action is causing the country. I believe many people believed in Buhari and it was Buhari’s image that won APC the election because all those who gathered under Buhari are characters I won’t recommend.
Why won’t you recommend them?
I know them. Are they not the people who left the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to join APC? If you take PDP away from APC, what remains? How many of the states won in the last elections were APC states before the elections? I don’t want to go to all that because we are no longer in electioneering. My belief now is that the government should perform. All patriots and senior citizens should do everything to make Buhari’s government perform. I will do whatever that will make them perform because I don’t want the ship of the state to crumble.
After 55 years of independence, I am tired of saying that we should have done this or that. During the last presidential election, Afenifere supported Jonathan. We supported him because we believed that all the problems of the country are based on faulty foundation.
I said the two parties are evil but I choose Jonathan to be a lesser evil because I believed he will implement the 2014 National Conference report. The national confab brought us back to where we got independent before the military takeover in 1966. It was the military that de-structured Nigeria and until that position is reverted, we won’t move forward. I had said that if they win the election under the same constitution, the injustice that is being done to the rest of the country by the North will continue.
What are the injustices?
One of the injustices is that there are more local governments in the North than in the South. What is the basis for that? It was arbitrary. There was no basis under which they created more states and local governments in the North than the South and sharing revenue on the basis of number that is not based on any rational.
That is injustice. But we said we are not going to rectify it by force; let us sit down at a round table and that was what we did at the National Conference. I believe that a lot of injustices were rectified by the conference. President Buhari, few weeks ago allocated some money to bail out states and the money will be shared on state and local government basis the way they shared revenue.
You can see the injustice I am talking about with the way they share revenue based on the constitution, which does not favour the South or the West. And the way they are sharing the revenue is one of complaints of the Niger Delta that they are bringing in the money but they are not having enough because it was the military that decided how much the owner of a property should get from his rent.
So, our fight for restructuring was based on the imbalance in the federation. Tinubu and others have been shouting about constitutional federalism and when we had the opportunity to create it, they abandoned it for a reason, which I don’t know. That is the basis of the problem APC is having now. Under the recommendations of the confab, the question of zoning that APC members are talking about has been constitutionalised.
Do you see President Buhari implementing the confab report?
I wouldn’t know. It is one of the reasons why I said, I don’t want to vote for him because if he didn’t support the convocation of the National Conference, how would he be committed to implementing it? And that was where Jonathan has an edge. All the past presidents were asked to convoke a National Conference, which they didn’t.
It was only Jonathan that did it after a lot of pressure and that was why we are more confident in him. So, we believed that the man who convened the conference and got the recommendation would more likely implement the report than the man who didn’t believe in it. To be candid, if Buhari implement the confab report, he is my candidate. If you read the history of ethnic nationalities all over the world, the question of nationalities has always been a problem. I want to assure Buhari that if he implements the confab report; he will get the support of Afenifere.
There is no doubt about that. I sent him a text after he won the presidential election that, ‘now that they said he is a converted democrat, I wish him well if he can implement the policies of a democrat; you will have my support and the support of progressives.’ No doubt, if he implements the report of the confab, Afenifere will give him 100 per cent support.
The reasons why we are particular about the implementation of the confab report is that it will address areas where there are conflicts since independence. The content of the confab report solves a lot problem. Talking about corruption, the Federal Government is corrupt because they have too much money, but the confab has reduced the allocation of resources to the centre. We have also reduced the power at the centre and the question of impunity has also been resolved in the confab report. The question of a sitting governor not been taking to court has been removed.
You raised the question of imbalance in the system and North domineering in the polity. What is your take on the present situation where the heads of the three arms of government; executive, legislature and judiciary are all Northerners?
That is why we are insisting that we want a balanced federation. If you read the recommendations of the confab, we talked about judiciary, police, army and creation of states. We said no zone will have more states than other zones and we transferred local government to the region. So, if you can afford 40 local governments under a region, you can do it but you won’t use that to collect money from the centre. So, I am not surprised about what is happening in the country now. I am not surprised because they (APC leaders) have not agreed on how to govern; they only agreed on how to remove the man who was governing before. The man left and they are there but there was no consensus on how they would govern. That is the root of the APC crisis.
This is the second time the South- West would be losing out in the contest for the leadership of the House of Representatives. It happened in 2011 and the situation has repeated itself in 2015. How did you see the development?
South-West was not denied the speakership position in 2011; it was a Yoruba man who denied another Yoruba person the speakership. It was Hon. Mulikat Adeola-Akande that the PDP wanted but Tinubu brought up Aminu Tambuwal and supported him. That was what happened. It is what the PDP did to support Yakubu Dogara on June 9, 2015 that Tinubu did in 2011. He used the then Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) lawmakers to team up with some members of the PDP to support Tambuwal against Adeola-Akande. So, you can’t say that the South-West was denied; it was a Yoruba man that denied them. It is on record that the PDP supported Adeola- Akande but Tinubu because of his own self-interest supported Tambuwal.
As a former National Chairman of the Alliance for Democracy (AD), do you think Tinubu is overbearing as some people claim he is?
What Tinubu accused us of before he sidelined us and left the AD is what he is doing now. The Afenifere leaders, who Tinubu accused of being overbearing, didn’t do as much as he is doing now. We didn’t impose any candidate on him. And our overbearing then was because we were telling him not to do what Action Group and Obafemi Awolowo were not known for.
He wanted to be a dictator then and he saw us an impediment to his own goal. And that is what the people in APC are accusing him of doing now, saying they won’t allow him to do what he was doing in ACN in APC. He knows that we have never been overbearing; what we wanted then was to be on the path that Action Group and Awolowo are traditionally known for.
How do you see the delay in the composition of Buhari’s cabinet and the state of the economy?
For me, it is too early to judge him. A student can be a dullard in primary school, brilliant at secondary school and graduates from university with First Class honours. Some people can be low starters. I am giving a concession that may be he (Buhari) is a slow starter that can pick up later. I want to regard him as slow starter who can perform wonders later.
I don’t want to be pessimistic; I want to be optimistic. On the economy, these are some of the problems that Buhari promised Nigerians during his campaign that he would solve if he becomes the president. What we are seeing now is not strange. During the recent controversy over the issue of Buhari’s age, somebody said there is nothing that the president wants to talk about now that he does not know about the government. He is not like Shehu Shagari, who doesn’t want to be president and was brought into office.
He is not like Olusegun Obasanjo who was brought from prison to come and be president. Buhari fought for presidency for almost 10 years; so he must have a plan and programme. He must know what is wrong with the country which he believes he can provide solutions to as a president.
I won’t give them a pass mark. The Action Group to which I belonged to was in existence for a whole year before they came into government; meeting and formulating policies. They have their policies and manifestoes ready before they contested the election. It was that manifestoes and policies they sold to the people before they were voted for and by the time Chief Obafemi Awolowo came into office in 1952, he was not setting up a committee on agriculture or any other things. What the minister will do was already there; he only went into action.
Awolowo spent only seven years as Premier of Western Region to achieve great things he did in the region. He didn’t spend one, two or three years forming committees, bringing up recommendations. What is to be done is already planned for because he has done the analysis. He wanted to do free education and it was not when he got to office that he set up a committee on education.
Are you insinuating that the president and the governors didn’t prepare for governance?
That is obvious. It is obvious. How can he be saying they gave him handing-over notes few days after inauguration for him to know what to do? He shouldn’t be talking like that. All along he was campaigning, criticising Jonathan, he ought to have known what was wrong with the gov-ernment.
For example in Lagos in 1979, before the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) came into power, we have located where there would be primary schools. We knew how many children are in school and how many should be in school. And by the time we came in, Governor Lateef Jakande was just opening new primary schools every week.
He was not settling up committees; he was implementing because he already knew what to do. That is what we call a prepared government. There is no politician dead or alive that toured Nigeria like Awolowo. There was no corner in Nigeria that Awolowo didn’t know and he knew the problem of each area. And those of us who are his lieutenants ab initio were able to talk about problems in everywhere in the country.
When we are talking about creation of more states and minorities in the North, we know what we are talking about. In Borno, where there is Boko Haram insurgency, I spent one year in Maiduguri campaigning for the UPN and that is why I know minority problems in the area. During the last National Conference, we advocated for minorities in the North to be given a state because we know that the Northern oligarchy will not support creation of more states in the North because the minorities there are under them.
One of the problems Buhari promised to tackle is corruption…
He said he will stop corruption. It is too early; so I won’t rush him. He has to be fair and know what tactics to be used. The issue of corruption is part of what we believe we have solved with the recommendation of the confab. But if he didn’t do it that way, he must have his own magic. So, let us see how he will solve the corruption problem.
Some former governors are being tried by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). How do you see the development?
Buhari said nobody should be spared and I support him. Nobody will oppose any measure that he wants to use to fight corruption. Every honest Nigeria citizen must support any measure that the president wants to take to wipe out corruption. That is not contentious because people want corruption to be wiped out. We only differ on method.
One of the things people are using against Buhari is that he may find it difficult to fight corruption with the people surrounding him. The president is surrounded by corrupt people because many people in his party are corrupt. He must embark on the corruption war without being selective and by the time he starts, he must not spare anybody.
I want him to prove me wrong by the time he starts his corruption war, which I support. And when I see that he is not selective, I will say this is my man. But by the time he starts and deals with people in the opposition and leaves those who backed him to win the election, then one can raise an eyebrow. I support any measure that he will take to wipe out corruption because corruption will not take us anywhere.
How do you see the rejection by Buhari of N400 million bullet proof cars?
That is fine and I support him on that. People like me will not be surprised about that because that is his character. All we are saying is that he is in a team; can he do it honestly and wipe out corruption across board? I am not judging him yet; I want him to prove himself and I pray that he should succeeds.
The Boko Haram insurgents have renewed attacks in the North. Why the resurgence?
It is unfortunate. Before, they said Jonathan was slow and Buhari even said few days ago that the former president didn’t react adequately to the problem. He (Buhari) is there now and everybody knows that before Jonathan left office, we were almost forgetting about Boko Haram in the North- East.
In Adamawa, Boko Haram was almost wiped out. The Boko Haram has now come back and the situation is getting worse. I am praying that President Buhari should be able to combat them because it is not in our interest. Boko Haram now go to Kano, Kaduna, Zaria and Jos killing people and if we are not careful like somebody said few days ago, they might come to the South.
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