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Why I Cannot Work Against Pres. Yar'dua - Bola Tinubu
By Vanguard

To so many people, you mean so many things: To those who love you and who have benefitted from your benevolence, they see you as a kind, sympathetic and good person. To your political opponents, even within your own party, they see you as a very strategic schemer; yet to the opposing party, PDP specifically, they see you as a cheat, and even say all manner of things about you. For you as an individual, when you hear all these, what runs through your mind?

I’m a politician, I don’t expect that I will have hundred per cent of the people to praise me hundred per cent of the time. I like to be given credit for what I have done and what I’ve achieved; I don’t expect political opponents to see anything good because of the nature of the Nigerian political system. Well, you have to be able to assess your opponents: 

Do they have the understanding, do they have the knowledge, the depth that is so analytical, that is so cerebral, that demonstrates their depth of sociological aspect of governance. 

I will be worried if a former governor like Jakande, who was elected (I hate to hear all these military administrators been referred to as former governors, it’s an aberration because nobody elected them into governance, they came in through the barrel of the gun) but if a Jakande, who was elected and who has been through the principles of politics says something, I’ll take him seriously.

But if it were a PDP government, especially at the centre where they have 65 per cent of the revenue accruable to the entire nation, they couldn’t see that the common Ibadan expressway is so crucial to the economic development of the nation, then why should I be worried.

When the rail system is down and they have no democratic credentials other than rigged elections and ambitions, so why do I expect any criticism from them to even bother me. I think they are financially, economically, sociologically, illiterates. 

I don’t allow their distractions. If a member of my party will criticise me, I will look at it and take a second look, for what reason and if it’s just a bite, it’s okay and I’ll make amends. Leaders must be put on hot seat at anytime and they are expected to reshape and acknowledge the good people around them.

You will even have mercenaries around, so I don’t let it bother me, I look at whatever I’m doing, I keep my eyes on the ball and I get focused. I expect that I will achieve my goal and that is more important to me.

 What level of governance did you meet when you took over in Lagos State.?

What level of governance did I meet? That government was based on mere propaganda of achievement, catalogue of deceptions and failures, bad chains of roads for nothing.
Deception of the people, mismanagement of the funds and the resources, bastardisation of the system, a web of corruption, that was what we met.

This state was close to financial collapse; but because it has its own resilience, being the financial and economic capital of the country (that was going to the brinks).  In facing those challenges, we had to get good people to do that and because they want you to fail, if you respond to them, you will have some problems.

 If people were to pick your opposition for you, they would pick the immediate past president, Olusegun Obasanjo. In 1999 and 2000, the perception out there was such that, well, he’s of the Yoruba stock (even if he doesn’t agree to that) and the AD governors one way or the other, were trying to shield and protect their own but suddenly, something happened. At what point did your person and Obasanjo begin to pull apart?
First of all, let me clear this. I didn’t see Obasanjo from the prism of Yoruba leader or Yoruba president. As a democrat, I believe in democratic value, I believe in opportunities.
He (Obasanjo) was given the opportunity, I never campaigned for him, I didn’t vote for him, I didn’t like the military. The hallmark of a person like him was deception and I carried the burden and the memory of the annulment of June 12. I was with M.K.O Abiola when Obasanjo, Abiola and myself had a long discussion in Abiola’s house.

 When was this?

Immediately after the annulment of June 12. He was in his house, we even had Amala and vegetable together in Ikeja. Not long after that, I don’t want to go into micro details, I don’t want to go into it, but Abiola was very generous to Obasanjo. He then left Abiola’s house saying that there is no way the election should be annulled; the following week, he said from Harare that Abiola was not the Messiah. I was flabbergasted, I was shocked.

 When M.K.O also heard that I’m sure he would have been shocked, what was his own immediate response?
He was extremely disappointed, he was angry and he said well he knows that Obasanjo didn’t want him to be there, he knows that Obasanjo was a collaborator, I said why did you then receive him and do all what you did. He said if you want to kiss a person, you have to draw them closer and if you have to bite or slap them too, you have to draw them closer, he was disappointed and bitter.
Ever since, I took a cue never to trust the military. 

I am expecting to hear what General Diya would say as the reason for his own part because what they said was that they were going to actualise June 12, I learnt from all that the deceptive nature and I read so many strategic books in the military environment that you come to realise that deception is the hallmark of every military person.

If you don’t deceive the enemy, you cannot win the war and even the name they call their war uniform is known as camouflage, what’s the meaning of camouflage?

Ever since, I stopped believing in such deception; so, I never saw Obasanjo from the prism of being a Yoruba leader or from the angle of being Yoruba president. I didn’t campaign for him, I didn’t vote for him.

But people remember you as one of his people then?

Once there is a president, you’ve got to, first for the sake of the country, embrace him, be patriotic. Our own type of leadership is different, our own type of politics is different, it’s not good to be in the opposition for opposition sake, you must have a divergent principle and fundamental difference to oppose and you value your platform, your manifesto, your programme must be clear from the others.

We were just coming out of a bitter struggle, we had somebody camouflaged as a democrat, at that time, the uniform was gone. So, we had somebody in the civilian toga, preaching transparency, accountability, development and wanting the image of the country to get cleaned up and that my passport, your passport and citizenry be honoured and the dignity they deserved restored. He brought hope then, so we had to give him a chance not because he was a Yoruba.

He was like a preacher’s sermon not knowing that it was mere rhetoric and you will agree with me that a large number of Nigerians believed in Obasanjo.

We did tolerate him to some extent, I saw him departing from the democratic norm, the value, the rule of law and he showed his dictatorial ability. Not quite the second year, I saw the warning sign and therefore, I stayed on my guard and I believed my colleagues then didn’t ordinarily get infatuated, they tried to particularly use the impeachment and the media attraction then that they didn’t have a case to persuade them that shortly before eight years, he will do things, he will change, there will be reliable census data, he promised federalism and so many things to convince them that may be true federalism may emerge.

So, no matter from who it’s emerging, they didn’t care about that deception but some of the leaders, because if you hear people like Ayo Adebanjo praising hosanna, ‘Obasanjo is now born again and all of that’, but when you want stability and you want development in a democratic environment, is it a crime to trust, if not, he was trusted to provide leadership, to provide honesty that he was preaching.

The election that brought him in was free and fair to some degree, it has the appearance of free and fair but we are not there yet because it is a very young democracy that was in an incubator, that needed a life support. That life support is the cooperation and collaboration of everybody; so when we said, let’s nurture this democracy, but is it a crime to believe in this democracy. So, that was the problem.

You said you saw some signals already and that immediately got you thinking. I want you to draw a parallel and a meeting point between that event in Abiola’s house and what he said later. Here is a man who just come preaching goodness, preaching some of the values that the progressives and the AD as a party stood for. Can you just give an instance of what he actually did that got you thinking that this is a thorough breed military man?

We had the Independent Power Project, he was almost backing out. Really, the IPP served as a revolution to the then NEPA and to break the monopoly of NEPA so that you’ll have independent power source. To have an agreement and you’re backing off, you have to ask, is he a man of rule of law, did he really care about the traditional image of the country. Even in the Council of State, the tendency not to allow healthy and robust debate at the Council of State and take ideas.

I’m from a corporate environment, private sector where professional capacity is allowed to flourish, the potentials in individuals are encouraged and here you have a president who sees such as an argument, he gets angry. Then I saw infringement in various revenue releases and allocation. There was a time when we came back with only N200m for the entire state in a month, go and ask Wale Edun, and we survived; it’s another miracle story.

Looking at the fact that Lagos is a window to the rest of the world and so, seeing this proposed development programme, the infrastruture plans that I discussed with him, he allowed shenanigans, mundane excuses to sway him from it. He didn’t see the fact that Lagos is a locomotive engine of the country.

 Was it that he didn’t see it or he chose to ignore it?
He chose not to recognise it, he was full of mundane, pettiness and all of that. He said if you don’t join PDP and all that, he wants to be worshiped.

But all these were not known in the open then?

It was not known. First, you have to see the presidency as an institution, there are certain things you have to do not against the president and you must do all things possible to protect that institution. So, we have to do that on the one hand and at a stage when I was tired, I headed for the court.

We started going to court, that let’s see what the judiciary will do and the judiciary stood its ground, it started showing that it is truly independent and they can reshape things in the country.
That was the hope, otherwise, we could have ended up with a lot of incidents that may be possible anarchy because we were not far from it.

 Then suddenly, the issue of attempted impeachment of Obasanjo in 2002, the polity was really over heated then and the AD as a party and to a large extent, the leadership too tried to, in a way rally round him?

His impeachment was in the manner it came. The polity was over heated and it was almost getting to the end of that tenure, PDP tried to impeach the president, not because it was Obasanjo. We suffered, these people didn’t suffer for the democracy that we suffered for, we were tried, we were in jail; they were plugging from the apple tree that we planted, nurtured and suffered for, so they didn’t know the value.

We won democracy no matter how rickety it is and to try to create instability at that time was seen as being too early; these people in uniform can come from anywhere and say come pack your things and go, we might be set back another 15 years.

Whatever Obasanjo that we had then, it appeared to us he cannot be like Abacha who had driven everybody out of town.

I wish he was impeached but I didn’t blame anybody who was trying to do that because impeachment might be too early then and they didn’t actually articulate the reasons for the impeachment very well. They would have impeached and replaced him easily but those who supported him knew what they were thinking because we said the thinking was too early to destablise this democratic dispensation, let us live with, we’ve suffered so much for democracy to let it go.

It’s not because he’s a Yoruba man, we didn’t vote for him, if you want to see him as a Yoruba man, we would have voted for him but we didn’t vote for him.
Those who voted for him were the ones trying to impeach him, they were the ones complaining, we said roast in your soup.

 When he came for state visit and people saw you and Obasanjo, everything looked very cosy and then suddenly….  At the time he started and when he got to that edge and you had to actually make your stand known, some people, righteously or otherwise, insinuated that all these things were coming to an end because the AD then was an associate of his inspite of the fact that he was in PDP and you were in AD. Or maybe it was part of a grand agenda to undermine the number one because at some point, your associate, then vice president Atiku Abubakar came into the picture?

During the state visit, I gave him a rousing welcome, I gave Obasanjo a rally but in order to show that everything that he wanted and everything that he got or that he achieved, I didn’t ask him for a favour. There is no way that they can bring an application from me that I sought even a piece of land from them in Abuja, there is no one that can bring a note today that says give a contract to my cousin or my associate, I didn’t need anything from them. I stayed clear of that, I didn’t fall into that temptation, but I wanted things for Lagos State.

I wanted a road that will bye-pass the port and burst out in Shagamu, that will take the trucks out of the Apapa-Iganmu away from the ports’ terminal burst through Ogun and go into the expressway, a bye-pass. We planned a belt way for Lagos. All that were planned were part of the transition that I set up as the blue print for Lagos State mega city, the development was planned ever since then. These was the help that I wanted to give to the nation and Lagosians on the Independent Power Project, that we can do it and he said we can.

A power scheme that he we wanted to run was for only 90 mega watts; it was Obasanjo who asked us to increase it to nine barges to give 270 mega watts minimum. He saw it and said he needed it, the media was screaming at him on the problem of power failures. We said only 90 mega watts of 30 mega watts each, if you see it and if you’re satisfied, then we can move on from there. It was a pilot scheme to break the monopoly of NEPA, he ordered that we make it 270 mega watts; and we swung into action believing my president.

 Would you say that was one of the ways Obasanjo deceived you?

That’s a commitment.  You don’t disobey, that is an instruction from the president of a country, not ordinary planning, an agreement was on the ground, that is an assignment. If a president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria gave me an assignment as a governor of Lagos State that will be beneficial to the entire nation, I don’t see politics, I don’t see partisanship in that.

I see the institution and the country, patriotically and I went after it.  So if I did that assignment and my president let me down, then I can have a story to tell, which I have now, and the story’s here.
I can say that he’s not a reliable leader.

 Then you had Chief Bola Ige of blessed memory as the Minister for Power. In all of these, did he try to convince the...?
(Cuts in) Bola Ige tried so hard because he wanted to succeed and we were trying to do this for the nation. They were almost completing the one in India and another one in the Philippines.  In fact, it was the series of barges that were used to augment electricity then while they were using the thermos plant and energy plant in the Philippines that they diverted to Nigeria.

These barges were needed in California and New York at that time, they only gave us priority to say this is a developing economy and I wrote to the Corporate Council of the United States which also got involved. So, here is a project short term and the immediate impact was for the 90 mega watts and then, which the president ordered to be 270, six barges more that was supposed to serve the nation; there again, there will be medium term and rehabilitation of Egbin plant.

The long run term, we will do a submarine pipeline to bring gas and repair Egbin and operate it to deliver energy to the country.

That is guaranteed over 2000 mega watts. Bola Ige was full of joy, then, there was another power station for Marogbo in Badagry which Shell was ready to pipe gas to for 800 mega watts to start at 500 and move on to 800 mega watts; by now, we would have been 4000 mega watts from Lagos alone. We were begging we were on our knees; this is a total package of a direct foreign investment of over $830 million.

 By the calculation then?
Yes, by the calculation then, do you know what they were looking at; they thought it was a contract. They didn’t believe that a foreign investor can bring $830 million without payment under the table; they were looking for 10 per cent from me.

 Who were these people?

Let me keep their names. They said Bola Tinubu got a contract for $830m and he will eat it alone. Stupid people; if you want people to invest in your environment, you put a sweetener to encourage them, you don’t ask them to bring bribe, you don’t ask them to pay under the table. You encourage them, you might even give them task holiday, you might give them all sorts of sweetener, that you can use to attract them, all sorts of condition.

Those people were looking for money under the table and when they didn’t see it, they thought and said go and do it alone, they started campaigning against them. Their campaign was ferocious against the project, Obasanjo too, dropped the keg by putting all sorts of obstacles and conditions on the way. It’s unfortunate for this country.

 After the state visit, what led to the rift?

That is what led to it. He promised to take action, but when he got there, he didn’t take any action, he started back tracking; I took him through the road including Kingsway road and many federal roads. Let’s turn Ikorodu and Badagry expressway to 10 lanes, I said repair Kingsway road and let me start from Lekki expressway.

Then, his Minister for Works, very unfortunate then, asked me to bring my Commissioner for Works, Rauf Aregbesola, which I did. Ogunlewe opposed some of these projects that he has plans to do including the Okota bridge.

I told Mr President that your people are seeing this on the prism on political partisanship and he was told that if you take your responsibility to do things in Lagos, you will be giving so much credit to Bola Tinubu and that was their goal. Before you knew it, there was crisis, we had crisis in Mile 12 where the Hausas, the Igbos and Yorubas clashed, where he (Obasanjo) threatened a State of Emergency and I replied him that it’s unconstitutional, you cannot do it, not in Lagos. He didn’t like that reply, he took it personal ever since.

That was the end of our relationship. I told him that you don’t dare it.
What you don’t get through the ballot boxes, you don’t get it through illegal means of emergency. He saw that response as a personal insult, he didn’t look at it from the constitutional point of view. He didn’t see it as rule of law, he saw it as a personal affront from a governor that he appointed.
One day he told me and I’m quoting Obasanjo “You are my representative in that state” and I said no, you were elected the same day I was elected. Our functions are different, our responsibilities, clear in the constitution.

 What was his reply?

He was angry. Forget your military days where you appoint administrators, please let it be flushed out of your mind. He said he will throw me out.

 Was it in his office or somewhere else?

It was in his office. And I told him one on one that this is the office of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, you are a tenant here sir, you can’t throw me out. Without us in the state, you cannot be a president.

It got that bad.
Yes, it got that bad. The truth must be told and that was the first. The second one he said I should not enter the villa, I said you don’t dare do it, unless I come to your bedroom sir, this is our house.

 Was it that you were going to see him or that you were coming for a function in the villa and he said you cannot come or you wanted to have audience with him?

I wanted to have audience with him, he didn’t give me the audience but I told him the piece of my mind.

 But you still got to the villa.

I got in. When I said you’re a tenant here then he said yes you can say that again.

 But you didn’t say it again?

I said it.

 I’m sure you must have been aware of some of the allegations that you were detained in one of the states in the USA as a governor; at some point, they said you were trying to launder money?
I was aware of the rumour. They were even preparing to use whatever they can to even disqualify me but I saw them as cowards and I told my cabinet, treat them as cowards. If they can’t defeat me during the elections and they try to diminish me, then why are they denying me the financial allocation and I was doing the financial re-engineering of Lagos State, promoting the interest of Lagos and serving the people of Lagos State and all they could see is finding a way to spread a rumour that’s false and all of that.

I won’t pay attention to them, you get angry, that is what they want to do but you don’t loose sleep because you know it’s not true; then, I know they can cook up any story because they were all over, it was getting to me, they had my social security number, they had my records, they even got a private eye.

I planned my strategy to let their scheme blow in their face, I was very strategic. They were the one coming; so, I got my party to write to the American that before they can allow me for a second term, they would want to know whether I have a criminal record of any kind. The USA said unless the request will come from an institution with the power to prosecute if there are such allegations or if there’s such a record or if there’s such a finding, then they will assist.

That is the only way that they can search the criminal record of the FBI and get the result out. So, I organised an independent petition to the IG because they said it’s only the IG who can do that and I cited some instances, using their own allegations. I turned it round now and asked my party to do a petition to the IG, so, the IG will be prompted to write to the USA. And the IG could write to the USA, the IG will get the information that will reveal the records. We even told him that Bola Tinubu was in jail at a particular period.

It was a complex strategy. So, thinking that they will get bonus and get credit, he (IG) himself wrote the petition, so when the report came in and by my right, I am entitled to a copy, it went to the IG, he had to release the report, the report showed that I have no record not even a trial.
We got the report and got it published; it was a strategy of using their own poison on their dogs.

 Immediately after the June 12 elections and it became obvious that M.K.O Abiola was going to win, certain chain of events happened.  If you were to capture, in summary, somebody who was not around what are those things you would say happened?

As events unfolded, you would see that Prof Nwosu developed a very credible system and Nigeria was full of anxiety, they want democracy. However, the unity of Nigeria was further promoted because of the two-party system.

The religious tolerance and the yearning of people to put a credible candidate there was built and they showed in Abiola. They thought the Muslim-Muslim ticket would not work, they thought the north will be so parochial.
To be honest with you, they laid the foundation of Nigeria’s unity ever since then.

 When you say they...
(Cuts in) The entire leadership of this country particularly, the north, to have voted for Abiola massively, he defeated Tofa in the north. It was demonstrated then that the character of individuals matters more than even the label or the partisanship of political parties. Ever since, I have been very touchy about the issue of the north and the issue of the Yoruba because that I cannot forget; they voted for him. They didn’t see him as a Yoruba that they cannot vote for, they did campaign for him, he won the election massively.

As the other events started to unfold, I saw personal agenda, collision, conspiracy; I saw abuse of power and over riding authority and the awesomeness of the power of the president and the cowardliness of Nigerians in general.

Nigerians, too complacent, laid back, happy for nothing, we just live day by day because the reaction that I expected after the annulment was different. People started talking from all sides of the mouth and saying that okay let’s tolerate these people because they have guns. Who gave them the guns?

We gave them the guns, we asked them to protect us with the guns. People were not on the streets, everybody went into a cloak room saying ‘I can’t die oh’. Everybody wants an omelet but they don’t want to break the eggs but I credit some of my friends even from the north.

We said we have to save this country and we moved together, we formed a body and we ended up being in jail together. We were tried by the military dictator then, Abacha and it was a trying period for the country.

I must say, I lost hope for the country then, I was fed up with this nation and that was a tragedy, a classic tragedy for this country.

 What were those things that you observed about Abiola then?
He was bitter no doubt about that but determined. Without Abiola, we would have probably given up because he was being persuaded left, right and centre to give up that mandate. Whenever he says he can’t face a moving train was a different meaning to him that time during the struggle; he saw the people and he wanted to truly break the shackle of poverty and hunger in our society. He was let down; he was bitter, he wasn’t happy but was determined.

 I’m sure in your conversations with him at the height of the annulment, what did you observe as his major headache?
His number one problem was poverty, number two, democracy, number three was believing that truly education is the greatest weapon against poverty. He made a mistake before but he saw it and knew that conservatives would never come out to have a progressive movement that will eradicate poverty. 

That is a class society, that there will always be this gap between the rich and the power and is meant to be sustained. It was easy for him to collect the outstanding debt owed to him and for him to run away from the struggle or tell the people he has surrendered the mandate.

He was determined to die.  He did not just believe in the comfort and personal wealth that he already had.  He was not looking at it from the dime and nickle, nor naira and kobo point of view; he was looking at it from the determination of a great philosopher who was ready to rescue his nation. He was determined.

 I’m also sure that you must have been aware of what people were saying then that ‘na God won catch am’, and that Babangida was his friend. What was his response to such statements?
Well, he said the people you can call your friend several times over, you may not know them until the situation is so critical and crucial, when they have to either relinquish power to you or they are in position of authority to handle power either against or for you.

That personal and character trait do not manifest until there is an opportunity. There were so many of these people that he thought he had known well, they shared moments of joy and patronage, acknowledged him to be a contractor or a supplier but not president.

That his love for people and that the people voted for him, he was resolute. We had discussions several times one on one with my driver or with his driver; that is my present driver was aware of these conversations.

 He’s a privileged driver

Very privileged because he drove Abiola as a free man last, he was the last man to drive him when he had this rally in Lagos before he was arrested.

 The story in town then  was that you were the purse, holding and spending Abiola’s money for the struggle. Yes or no?
No. I wasn’t in custody of his funds. I can tell you not to diminish Abiola, I don’t owe him but N25,000 that he gave to me when I was to represent him in Jos. He said he had no money but the rest of the funds were the money that I spent on my own. I was not in custody of his funds.  I put in my private funds and my investment, that’s all.

 Next month, it will be 10 years since he died, you were not in the country when he died?
Yes.

Can you remember what you were doing at the point you heard of his death, both himself and Abacha’s?

We were in London in company of some friends. We were on strategic review; the present governorship aspirant of Ekiti State, Dr Kayode Fayemi, in London, we just held a meeting in USA, a strategic meeting of which I can’t disclose and it was a very serious meeting that we planned to take some very serious actions.

After Abacha’s death?

No. Before then for the country. But suddenly like a miracle, we heard of Abacha’s death, we didn’t believe it was true until we started receiving calls from Nigeria. We were glued to the television until we saw the panel van that was taking his body.

 What was the mood like?

The mood was sober. The mood was very sober and honestly, it was convincing for us. Abdulsalami came on the air and after that we said eh another military man but we expected that military era will definitely be over. We were making calls and when he said he’s staying for a very short time and he set his transition and we said how will it be short because short in the military parlance could be sometimes five or six years.

Then we had contact from him that he was moving Abiola. Kofi Anan was trying to meet Anyaoku, the Commonwealth Secretary General then in Nigeria so that he can even release Abiola to them and stand surety for him, so that he can come oversees for his treatment and then to have some medical attention.

So, Anyaoku came, Kofi Anan was somewhere in Asia, he said he was going to join Anyaoku so that the two of them could talk to Abdulsalami.. I was at the command post in London then, my flat then was the command centre where most of the actions were taken. The first call came from Abraham Adesanya that they were invited for discussions and apparently, he got the phone number of one of us because they were watching us and monitoring us. 

Baba Adesanya consults a lot and so, we encouraged them to go and we also moved to London too from the USA. We were there when a call came from Abdulsalami himself, we received his call and we discussed a number of issues that he will soon release Abiola but that he had problems of whether he will still continue to call himself president. Meanwhile we said he cannot negotiate in chains, he has to break the shackles and let him see the freedom first. So, we heard Susan Rice and others were going to Nigeria too.

 Were they invited or it was out of their own volition.
I think they wanted to take the opportunity to clear with Nigeria that they were coming to see if they can seize the moment to rescue democracy. We were trying desperately to reach Abiola when we heard of his death and it was the greatest shock of our lives. Nobody could convince us that Abiola was not killed and we believe in Susan Rice, she’s committed.

 When you say you believe in Susan Rice….
(Cuts in) That was the commotion because she was part and parcel of the negotiation of the struggle and believed in the sanctity of that election. Therefore, it is very false to pin Susan Rice to the conspiracy of poison.

She felt she’s a Nigerian, here is a lady who told us passionately of how she felt. She saw the potentials of the country and that got us confused that she cannot be part of the conspiracy. It was a devastating period for us.

You know all that will go through your mind, we saw that Abdulsalami was sincere and then all the theories were coming in, whether when he moved Abiola to the guest house, and don’t forget, that was the time they relieved Al-Mustapha of his post. So there were so many theories coming in that maybe something happened in transit.

Nigeria was going to blow up and if we hadn’t let go, it would have happened but we just said, let’s apply some sense of faith in God Almighty. There is no amount of riot, there is no amount of killing that will bring Abiola back. The only way that we cherish his memory is to promote democracy and thereafter, we give it to him and God Almighty.

 When you look at what he’s done so far and his commitment to carry on, would you say you’re justified?
I am justified and fulfilled. I chose the best man for the job, I am a talent seeker and I got the best person for the state and that is the truth.

 We asked why you’re always hanging around, he said no that you don’t hang around him but that you go out together and that people will still see more of you around him.
If you have a child, won’t you watch him grow and succeed? If you have a successor that you believe can make you so proud, you work so hard and then, we didn’t take money from corporate interest, we didn’t sell our conscience, we didn’t mortgage the party. We worked so hard to put him in office and they are saying somebody is hanging around or tele-guiding him, it is nonsense.
You want to throw away my experience; you want me to be far away from him.

So if you’re saying I have been a successful governor, you don’t want him to tap from that; so you want him to be an enemy of me because he’s gotten power. All those saying that will turn round and say that he’s an ungrateful person. You want him to act like a very stupid man, that’s what you’re saying. Having said that, well, he’s a man with a sound mind, he will do it rightly.

 The late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Adekunle Ajasin and Abraham Adesanya were known to be great Yoruba leaders but presently, there is a vacuum. What qualities in your own view do you think the next Yoruba leader should possess?

First, the new leader must be very honest, upright, tolerant and must have the confidence of the people, must be progressive in his vision; must have the confidence of our people. However, let me distinguish. Awolowo was the leader of the progressive political party movement, not everybody in the Southwest accepted him as their leader but to the grassroot and majority of the people, he’s our leader. He was our political leader and till tomorrow, our hero.

He was partisan, he believed in his political ideology and philosophy. He didn’t tag himself as a Yoruba leader never did he. He was campaigning in the north, he was not campaigning to be a Yoruba president, he was campaigning in the Middle-Belt for the right and freedom of the people and of the minority. That is how he endeared himself to the Southwest and all other places then. He was campaigning for freedom and was working for it. He didn’t see himself from the cloak room of ethnic jingoism, he did not.

When the opportunity came for Ajasin to take over the mantle, he took it as Afenifere leader, yes, we the Yorubas accepted him as our leader but there were still other Yorubas who compromised completely, who went with Abacha, they didn’t see Ajasin as their leader because he gave them instruction to resign from government, they didn’t heed and you must respect and obey your leader, isn’t it?

We saw him as leader of the movement, leader of the group and leader of even NADECO. Don’t forget that it’s not only Yorubas who were in NADECO alone. So, leadership at a particular point in any history will be different, the character will be different.

Now, Abraham Adesanya came in another era, era of peace and promoting democracy and the interest of Afenifere and he was AD leader but Afenifere element in AD. Don’t forget, AD was a national party and Afenifere came in as an interest group but not all the Yorubas embraced it but we defeated them, so it is not a clannish ethnical Yoruba jingoism. In the entire geographical and sociological structure of this country, whoever shares our beliefs and values must be our leader to represent us and that’s it.

 There have been rumours making the round that you are scheming to emerge as a Yoruba leader, how true is this?

I am not scampering for Yoruba leadership and I am not sincerely angling or struggling by any means for it. I am a committed democrat, a politician to the core and a serious one for that matter; I believe in constitutional democracy, I believe the challenges facing this country is enormous and more complex but we have to unify efforts to consolidate our democratic gains, if we don’t move the nation forward, the alternative is dangerous.

Therefore, the leadership that some people are promoting today is the one that will make you look like a monarch or a neutral person; that will embrace PDP, that will embrace AC and the progressives and you mix apples and oranges.

These people who are promoting that are trying to use the credibility of Afenifere to cleanse their past offenses and the crime against the progressive principle and value that we believe in. I don’t believe in them, I don’t believe in those who rig elections to get to positions, they use Obasanjo’s ladder, Obasanjo’s environment, Obasanjo’s deception, Obasanjo’s rape to get to power.

They can do anything they want now, but we know the grave of their grandfather, so it’s a pass over from grandfather to father and father to son. Because Abraham Adesanya has passed on, they want to use Abraham Adesanya to cleanse their sins. Abraham Adesanya is not their political Jesus Christ (forgive me if it’s blasphemy). It’s only Jesus Christ that can do that. Therefore, they can’t use Abraham Adesanya, they can’t now create a new style of Yoruba leadership.

Of all the vices of INEC, Lagos survived.

(Cuts in) Yes, because we are smart and the people love us. The people love us dearly and we survived it. There are some men and women of gold. The man who was sent to supervise the election of Lagos, that is Moses Ogbe, was a good man, a man of gold, a man of integrity.

He would have thrown this country into chaos; by now, probably, the military would have been back. He upheld the truth, he did what he had to do and he did it well, you must celebrate such a person and you must respect such a person. Moses Ogbe, I didn’t meet him until after the result of the election, I didn’t see him face to face because they were changing them.

 You seem to be cosy with the Yar’Adua government. People are even saying you’ve dumped Atiku Abubakar because of Yar’Adua?

Having been in government, I know what the planning period is. He met a bureaucracy that is a web. How do you say on the night of the departure of Obasanjo, he brought together a collapsed ministry of works, ministry of transport and aviation; does he want his successor to succeed? How do you disentangle all of that?  So, you want the government to become a magician; perhaps it’s because I understand the implication of this offense.

When Obasanjo has not revived the rail line that we have in existence and he signed contract for dual rail. First of all, you have to make what you have to be working if it’s not adequate, then you can start to expand. It’s clear, I’ve been through it and you need a period to disentangle to sort out the whole of this. He didn’t leave a budget that is executable, that’s implementable for the programme of the government when left.

You need to really plan and if he now stumbles on the way, I know the president is sincere because I have known him from child hood, I have known him as a member of SDP. I have known him when he was a governor, we’ve exchanged ideas; because I’m in a different party doesn’t mean that I should abandon my friend and my brother.

It is not like that, I’m not a person like that and what is the benefit that would be derived by me if I work against his success. I must help to see that the nation gains at every period, at every step of the way. When he comes to campaign and I see that he’s not listening to advice, I abandon him, I say forget it. I want to see where I am wrong but I want to offer my advice, my solution to problems for this country to move forward. This democracy is too fragile and too young.

A man has a case in court, he has legitimacy problems but when did he receive the budget, when was the budget approved? Where are you going, what do you say and what do you do in Nigeria that you will not have the flak initially, it is not the criticism that is the problem, it is the road map and how to kick start for the sake of the generality of the public.

You cannot take everything at a go, he just limited himself to his seven point agenda, let’s see till the next one year. We must remember though that you cannot count how long it takes to design a vehicle, you can not determine how long it takes to produce the automobile but don’t forget that it took sometime before it got to the showroom.

It is the finished product that people will see. It’s because I have that understanding that is probably why I talk about the understanding of the system and the president. But truly, I don’t deny Yar’Adua, I will not, he’s my friend, he’s my brother and I have known him for quite sometime.

 There is this saying that the centre between you and the former Vice President seems not to be holding, how true is this?

The former Vice-President is still my friend and my brother. We’ve not departed in anyway. The point where we face is whether we are advising each other or not and everything, but I give him advice, it depends on him and I maintain my friendship. I can be the peace maker between the two brothers.

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